Moore's Paradox: New Essays on Belief, Rationality, and the First Person

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M O O R E ’ S PA R A D OX

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Moore’s Paradox New Essays on Belief, Rationality, and the First Person M I TC H E L L G R E E N and

JOHN N. WILLIAMS

CLARENDON PRESS · OXFORD

1 Great Clarendon Street, Oxford   Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide in Oxford New York Auckland Cape Town Dar es Salaam Hong Kong Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi New Delhi Shanghai Taipei Toronto With offices in Argentina Austria Brazil Chile Czech Republic France Greece Guatemala Hungary Italy Japan Poland Portugal Singapore South Korea Switzerland Thailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnam Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries Published in the United States by Oxford University Press Inc., New York  the several contributors 2007

The moral rights of the authors have been asserted Database right Oxford University Press (maker) First published 2007 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this book in any other binding or cover and you must impose the same condition on any acquirer British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Data available Typeset by Laserwords Private Limited, Chennai, India Printed in Great Britain on acid-free paper by Biddles Ltd, King’s Lynn, Norfolk ISBN 978–0–19–928279–1 1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

John N. Williams would like to dedicate this book to Vera, Ben, and Josh. Mitchell Green would like to dedicate this book to Lori, Noah, and Sofia.


Acknowledgements Mitchell Green would like to thank Roberto Mariano, Dean of the School of Economics and Social Sciences at the Singapore Management University for inviting him to visit that institution for the purpose of collaborating with John N. Williams on this volume. Green’s research was also supported by a Sesquicentennial Fellowship from the University of Virginia. John N. Williams would like to thank Roberto Mariano, Dean of the School of Economics and Social Sciences at the Singapore Management University for facilitating Professor Green’s visit, and the Wharton-SMU Research Centre for funding projects closely related to this book. The Editors join in thanking Peter Momtchiloff of Oxford University Press for his judicious oversight of this project.


Contents Contributors

xi

I . I N T RO D U C T I O N A N D H I S TO R I C A L C O N T E X T 1. Introduction Mitchell Green and John N. Williams 2. The All-Seeing Eye: A Blind Spot in the History of Ideas Roy Sorensen

3 37

I I . M O O R E ’ S PA R A D OX A N D K N OW L E D G E 3. Moorean Absurdity: An Epistemological Analysis Claudio de Almeida 4. The Normative Character of Belief Thomas Baldwin 5. Moore’s Paradox, Evans’s Principle, and Iterated Beliefs John N. Williams

53 76 90

I I I . M O O R E ’ S PA R A D OX , B E L I E F, A N D A S S E RT I O N 6. What Reflexive Pronouns Tell Us about Belief: A New Moore’s Paradox De Se, Rationality, and Privileged Access Jay David Atlas 7. Moore’s Paradox and the Transparency of Belief Jonathan E. Adler and Bradley Armour-Garb

117 146

I V. M O O R E ’ S PA R A D OX A N D C O N S C I O U S N E S S 8. Consciousness, Reasons, and Moore’s Paradox André Gallois 9. Moorean Absurdity and Showing What’s Within Mitchell Green

165 189

x

Contents V. A RG U M E N TS F RO M M O O R E ’ S PA R A D OX

10. My Philosophical Position Says p and I Don’t Believe p Alan Hájek 11. Moorean Pretense Robert M. Gordon Index of Names Subject Index

217 232 243 245

Contributors Jonathan E. Adler (CUNY, Graduate Center) Bradley Armour-Garb (University at Albany, SUNY) Jay David Atlas (Pomona College) Thomas Baldwin (University of York) Claudio de Almeida (PUCRS, Brazil) André Gallois (Syracuse University) Robert M. Gordon (University of Missouri, St. Louis) Mitchell Green (University of Virginia) Alan Hájek (The Australian National University) Roy Sorensen (Dartmouth College) John N. Williams (Singapore Management University)


PART I I N T RO D U C T I O N A N D H I S TO R I C A L C O N T E X T


1 Introduction Mitchell Green and John N. Williams

A . I N T RO D U C I N G M O O R E ’ S PA R A D OX G. E. Moore observed that to say,‘I went to the pictures last Tuesday but I don’t believe that I did’ would be ‘absurd’ (1942: 543). Over half a century later, such sayings continue to perplex philosophers and other students of language, logic, and cognition. On the one hand, such sayings seem distinct from semantically odd Liar-type sayings such as ‘What I’m now saying is not true’. Unlike Liar-type sentences, what Moore said might be true: One can readily imagine a situation in which Moore went to the pictures last Tuesday but does not believe that he did so. On the other hand, it does seem absurd to assert a proposition while, with no apparent change of mind, or aside to a different audience, going on to deny that one believes it. It seems no less absurd to judge true the following proposition: p and I do not believe that p. Ludwig Wittgenstein was fascinated by Moore’s example, and the absurdity of Moore’s saying was intensively discussed in the mid-twentieth century. Yet the source of the absurdity has remained elusive, and its recalcitrance has led researchers in recent decades to address it with greater care. Questions of the relation of Moore’s paradox to consciousness, self-knowledge, justification, self-expression, conversation, decision theory, belief, and other topics have accordingly come under increasing scrutiny. In addition, recent research has seen a number of ‘arguments from Moore’s Paradox’, aiming to establish a large philosophical thesis on the basis of this phenomenon. Such arguments have been directed toward functionalism in the philosophy of mind (Heal 1994; Collins 1987; Milgram 1994), self-knowledge (Shoemaker 1988, 1995; Gallois 1996), the existence of ‘blindspots’ or states that are ‘counterprivate’¹ (Sorensen 1988; Gombay 1988), evidentialism in epistemology (Adler 1999, ¹ A person’s state is counterprivate just in case she alone, when she is in that state, cannot judge that she is.

4

Introduction

2002), consciousness (Rosenthal 1995a, 1995b), skepticism (DeRose 1991, 1996, 2002), fictionalism (Szabo-Gendler 2001), and simulation vs. theory theories of knowledge of other minds (Gordon 2000). These developments have both shown the centrality of the topic and the depth of treatment needed for its elucidation. As one author has put it, Moore’s Paradox can be seen as an emblem for peculiarities in the first-person point of view, specifically how the possibilities for thinking and talking about oneself are systematically different from the possibilities of thinking and talking about other people. (Moran 1997)

In the remainder of this Introduction we shall briefly discuss (B) Moore’s views on the subject, (C) Wittgenstein’s remarks on the matter in response to Moore, (D) constraints on any adequate account of Moore’s brand of absurdity, (E) some available approaches to explaining this brand of absurdity, and, finally (F) the contributions to this volume and their relation to currently open questions on the topic. B . M O O R E O N PA R A D OX A N D A B S U R D I T Y Moore’s remarks about the cases that interested him were relatively consistent across the occasions in which he wrote about the topic. In an untitled and incomplete manuscript of a paper that he gave to the Moral Sciences Club in Cambridge, Moore observes that the words, ‘Though I don’t believe it’s raining, yet as a matter of fact it really is raining’ by themselves are not nonsensical.² Moore notes that he could use these words in giving a philosophical example without saying anything nonsensical. He also credits Wittgenstein with the observation that one could sensibly suppose a situation in which those words are true of him. He further observes that no absurdity would arise from a third person or past tense utterance of the sentences in question, such as, ‘Moore does not think it is raining, yet as a matter of fact it is,’ or ‘I thought it was not raining, but as a matter of fact it was.’ Moore elucidates this last thought with a semantic consideration, remarking that the meaning of the sentence ‘I don’t believe that it is raining’ is to be given in terms of the speaker’s state of mind: The words, ‘I don’t believe it’s raining’ when said by a particular person have a definite meaning in English: we can say that what they mean is something about his state of mind—what they mean can’t be true unless his state of mind is one which can be properly described by saying he doesn’t believe that; and so with ‘as a matter of fact it is raining’. (Moore 1993: 210) ² Moore (1993; 207). Baldwin dates this paper from 1944. This utterance has the same omissive form as Morre’s example in his 1942, ‘I went to the pictures last Tuesday but I don’t believe that I did’, namely, ‘p & I don’t believe that p’.

Mitchell Green and John N. Williams

5

Moore’s point is that what is said in an utterance of ‘I believe it’s raining’ is different from what is said in an utterance of ‘It’s raining’, because only the truth of the former depends upon the state of mind of the speaker. Although this point may sound like a platitude, we shall see that it has been denied. Moore is also careful to distinguish absurdity from paradox. What is absurd, he suggests, is to utter the just-quoted sentence assertively. What is paradoxical is that there should be such an absurdity that cannot be fully explained in terms of a semantic contradiction generated by the words themselves: ‘It is a paradox that it should be perfectly absurd to utter assertively words of which the meaning is something which may quite well be true—is not a contradiction’ (Moore 1993: 209). We shall follow Moore in likewise distinguishing between Moorean absurdity and Moore’s paradox. Moore doubted that he had a complete explanation of the nature of the absurdity (Moore 1993: 211) but he made some suggestions for arriving at one. He tells us that I believe that p follows neither from p nor from I assert that p. Nevertheless, Moore contends, in ‘assertively uttering’ an indicative sentence, one implies, in an everyday sense of ‘imply’, that one believes it. Again in his (1944), Moore remarks that, ‘[t]here seems to be nothing mysterious about this sense of ‘‘imply’’ ’ (p. 542). However, if one goes on to assert that one does not believe it, what one says contradicts what one implies (Moore 1993: 210). So his account of the Moorean omissive assertion, ‘p & I don’t believe that p’ requires the principle that if I assert that p then I imply that I believe that p (‘Omissive’ because the assertion reports the specific omission of true belief). Suppose I assert that p. Then I imply that I believe that p. But suppose I then assert that I don’t believe that p. What I assert (that I don’t believe that p) contradicts what I just implied (that I believe that p). So one part of my conjunctive assertion contradicts what my assertion of another part implies. Moore also observes that to say, ‘I believe that he has gone out, but he has not’ would also be ‘absurd’ (1944: 204). Unlike his first example, this has the commissive form, ‘p & I believe that not-p’ (‘Commissive’ because the assertion reports the commission of a specific mistake in belief). Here Moore uses a second principle, that if I assert that p then I imply that I don’t believe that not-p. So by asserting that p I imply that I don’t believe that not-p, which contradicts the content of the second conjunct of my assertion. Since this proposal fails to explain the omissive case, Moore himself may not have recognized that his two examples are different forms. For on the second principle, if I assert that (p & I don’t believe that p) then I imply-and-then-assert that I neither believe that not-p nor believe that p, which is neither a self-contradiction nor a contradictory set of beliefs.³ To repair this problem Moore could either apply his first principle to the commissive case as well or, less economically, apply the first principle to the ³ We assume here assertion distribution: If S asserts that ( p & q), then S asserts that p, and S asserts that q.

6

Introduction

omissive case and the second to the commissive case. On the first option, if I assert that p, then I imply that I believe that p. But suppose I then assert that I believe that not-p. This does not contradict what I have just implied. Instead I have implied-and-then-asserted that I have contradictory beliefs about whether or not p. So the two absurdities are conceptually distinct. On the second option, I have implied-and-then-asserted a contradiction in either case (that I do and don’t believe that p, in the omissive case and that I do and don’t believe that not-p, in the commissive case), so now the two absurdities come out as conceptually identical. This means that a reconstruction of Moore’s account must now choose between economy of explanandum and economy of explanans. One consideration in favor of the first option is that since the omissive form, which reports a specific instance of my ignorance, is semantically distinct from the commissive, which reports my specific mistake, we might expect a resulting structural difference in the contradiction-like phenomena that constitute the resulting absurdity. Finally, Moore appears to consider only the absurdity of assertoric utterances and so nowhere considers the absurdity as it occurs in thought, despite the fact that omissive or commissive propositions appear absurd if I do not assert, but merely judge them true. It is only relatively recently (due apparently to Sorensen 1988) that attention in the literature has turned to the absurdity as one in judgment.

C . W I T TG E N S T E I N O N M O O R E ’ S PA R A D OX Wittgenstein attended Moore’s paper discussing this set of problems at the Moral Sciences Club in 1944. His letters to Moore and notebook entries show that he was intensely interested in these problems.⁴ Indeed, Malcolm reports Wittgenstein as having ‘once remarked that the only work of Moore’s that greatly impressed him was his discovery of the peculiar kind of nonsense involved in such a sentence as ‘‘It’s raining but I don’t believe it’’ ’ (1984: 66). In section X of the second part of the Investigations (which, according to Malcolm, was written in 1949), Wittgenstein coins the term ‘Moore’s paradox’ (p. 190) and devotes the rest of that section to it. He also discusses it in his Remarks on the Foundations of Psychology (vol. i, §§478–90; vol. ii, §§280–90). According to his letter to Moore, Wittgenstein thought that the absurdity is important because it is ‘something similar to a contradiction, thought it isn’t one’. He also thought that although the explanation of the absurdity will say ⁴ Malcolm (1995) reports counting 130 remarks on the verb ‘to believe’ in Remarks on the Philosophy of Psychology and in the first volume of Last Writings on the Philosophy of Psychology. This concentration, Malcolm suggests, was provoked in large part by Wittgenstein’s interest in Moore’s paradox. Wittgenstein elsewhere writes, ‘Moore stirred up a philosophical wasps’ nest with his paradox; and the only the wasps did not fly out was that they were too listless’ (1980: 76). His letter to Moore is in his reason (1974: 177).


7

‘something about the logic of assertion’ it will also show that ‘logic isn’t as simple as logicians think it is’ (1974: 177). There, Wittgenstein also points out that there is no absurdity in supposing that Moore’s saying is true. In the same letter, Wittgenstein comments: If someone asks me ‘Is there a fire in the next room?’ and he answers, ‘I believe there is,’ I can’t say: ‘Don’t be irrelevant. I asked you about the fire, not about your state of mind!’

thus displaying an interest in the relation of a self-report of belief that p to an assertion that p. In the Investigations Wittgenstein formulates ‘Moore’s paradox’ as the fact that ‘I believe that this is the case’ is used like the assertion ‘this is the case’; and yet the hypothesis that I believe that this is the case is not used like the hypothesis that this is the case.

Consistently with this first claim, Wittgenstein further holds that ‘the statement ‘‘I believe it’s going to rain’’ has a meaning like, that is to say a use like, ‘‘It’s going to rain . . .’’ ’ (1997: pt. II, sect. X). He further claims that if there were a verb meaning ‘to believe falsely’, it would not have any significant first person present indicative and adds that because ‘I believe it is so’, ‘throws light’ on my state of mind, so does ‘It is so’. In the first volume of his Remarks on the Foundations of Psychology, Wittgenstein returns to a formulation of the paradox in terms of supposition (§478): Moore’s paradox may be expressed like this: ‘I believe p’ says roughly the same as ‘ p’; but ‘Suppose I believe that p . . .’ does not say roughly the same as ‘Suppose p’.

and goes on to state (§490): The paradox is this: the supposition may be expressed as follows: ‘Suppose this went on inside me and that outside’—but the assertion that this is going on inside me asserts this is going on outside me. As suppositions the two propositions about the inside and the outside are quite independent, but not as assertions.

One position discernible in the above remarks is that if I assert ‘I believe that p’ then I assert that p. More generally, both my self-report of belief, ‘I believe that p’ and my plain assertion, ‘p’ have roughly⁵ similar uses and so, for Wittgenstein, roughly similar meanings. So as Wittgenstein adds, One might also put it like this: ‘I believe p’ means roughly the same as ‘p’. (§472)

Both tell a hearer something about my own attitude to the world as well as something about the world itself (as I take it to be). On this view, the absurdity of my assertion that (p & I believe that not-p) lies in the fact that my assertion of ⁵ Roughly: See section E.I.3 below for a view according to which, in asserting p I represent myself as knowing that p, while this does not hold for cases in which I assert that I believe that p. (We thank an anonymous referee for drawing our attention to this point.)

8

Introduction

the latter conjunct is also an assertion of not-p. Thus in asserting (p & I believe that not-p), I have contradicted myself on the matter of whether p.⁶ Wittgenstein seems to hint at a difficulty in this approach in Remarks, vol. ii, §420, where he observes that ‘if A says ‘‘I believe it’s raining’’ and B says ‘‘I don’t believe so’’, they are not contradicting each other.’ Presumably Wittgenstein would make the same point in a case in which B says, ‘I believe not’. Moreover, Wittgenstein seems to suggest a different relation of assertion to belief in the following passage: I want to say first of all with the assertion ‘it’s going to rain’ one expresses belief in that just as one expresses the wish to have wine with the words ‘Wine over here!’ (1980a: §472)

This passage claims that if I assert that p then I express a belief that p. So in asserting that (p & I don’t believe that p), I express-and-assert a belief and the lack of it, namely a self-contradiction, whereas in asserting that (p & I believe that not-p), I express-and-assert contradictory beliefs about whether p. We will postpone discussion of this account until Section F below. Finally, Wittgenstein observes (1980b: §290) that ‘under unusual circumstances [the] sentence [‘‘It’s raining but I don’t believe it’’] could be given a clear sense’. In (1980a: §§485–7), he gives two examples of non-absurd uses of omissive sentences. The first is when I exclaim in amazement, ‘He’s coming but I still can’t believe it’ (1980a: §485). Such a case is not absurd since the locution ‘I can’t believe it’, and its cognates have a conventional use as expressions of surprise rather than literal disavowals of belief. The second example is of a railway announcer who is convinced that the train whose scheduled arrival he is obliged to report won’t arrive. He announces its impending arrival and adds, ‘Personally I don’t believe it’ (1980a: §§486–7). Wittgenstein then gives an example of a non-absurd use of a commissive sentence, that of a soldier who produces military communiqués but adds that he believes they are incorrect. Wittgenstein’s point is that the absurdity in speech is not guaranteed by a mere utterance of a sentence of one of Moore’s omissive or commissive forms; rather it requires their assertion. ⁶ Moran denies that Wittgenstein should be thus construed, which construal he calls the Presentational view: ‘that in the first person present-tense the verb-phrase ‘‘I believe’’ is not in fact psychological, but rather represents a mode of presenting the relevant proposition which follows it’ (1997: 144). He goes on to show that the Presentational view is both implausible and does not comport with Wittgenstein’s texts, and infers from this that it is not Wittgenstein’s position that one who asserts a Moorean sentence contradicts herself. However, we do not impute the first of the two conjuncts of the Presentational view to Wittgenstein, but rather only the second, or more precisely only the doctrine that one who asserts ‘I believe that p’ also asserts p (whatever else she may be doing).


9

D . C O N S T R A I N TS O N A N AC C O U N T O F M O O R E A N ABSURDITY Our question is the source of Moorean absurdity: What makes utterances such as ‘It’s raining, but I don’t believe it’, as well as thoughts expressible with such words, absurd? Moore traces the absurdity of the utterance of the sentence, ‘It’s raining but I don’t believe it’ to the speaker’s being thereby committed to a self-contradiction. On this account, the absurdity is explained as a severe failure of theoretical rationality, a form of rationality concerned with tracking the truth. Norms constitutive of theoretical rationality include prohibitions against forming beliefs on insufficient evidence and against drawing inferences that are either deductively invalid or inductively weak. Extreme failures of theoretical rationality may be absurd. For instance, it seems absurd for a person to commit herself to a self-contradiction that, with a minimum of reflection, she would be able to see cannot be true, whether in virtue of syntax as in, ‘It is raining and not raining’ or in virtue of semantics, as in, ‘Women aren’t females’. It also seems absurd for her to commit herself to a pair of propositions that contradict each other, such as ‘I believe that p’ and ‘I don’t believe that p’ that, with a minimum of reflection, she would be able to see cannot both be true. Having discerned one source of absurdity in a severe failure of theoretical rationality, the question arises whether a different form of rationality could provide another. Practical rationality is a form of rationality concerned with prudent action. Among norms thought by many to be constitutive of practical rationality is the prescription to pursue that action most likely to achieve one’s desires, given how one believes the world to be. It would be a violation of this prescription to go to a petrol station to buy petrol in the conviction that it is shut. A related prescription is to choose that action most likely to maximize subjective expected utility, namely the weighted average of the desirabilities of each possible outcome of that action, the weights being the probabilities of those outcomes. Thus, unless Jeb places value on risk per se, and so long as he places some value on monetary gain, his choice of what he deems to be a 50 per cent chance of a $100 gain over what he deems a sure thing of that gain, would violate this prescription to maximize one’s subjective expected utility. Might it be possible to explain the absurdity to be found in Moore’s examples in terms of a failure of practical rationality so extreme that the agent, with little reflection, would see that her enterprise is an inept way, from among her options, of achieving her aims? We shall find below that some accounts of Moorean absurdity are couched in terms of practical rather than theoretical rationality. An account of the source of Moorean absurdity must, it seems, elucidate that source in terms of practical rationality, theoretical rationality, or some other system of norms. Moreover, many accounts of Moorean absurdity appeal to a

10

Introduction

notion of implication by claiming, for example, that in asserting a proposition p, a speaker implies that she believes that p; or that in asserting that she believes that p, she implies that p. To be assessed adequately such claims require elucidation in terms of one or another established notion of implication. Among such notions of implication are logical ( p implies q just in case there is no way for it to be true that p but false that q); evidential (p is adequate evidence for the truth of q); probabilistic (it is highly likely that p, given that q); or pragmatic implication, where this notion of pragmatic implication might in turn take any of the following forms: semantic presupposition (q’s being true is a necessary condition for p having truth value at all); pragmatic presupposition (q must be accepted as part of the conversational ‘common ground’ in order for assertion of p to be conversationally appropriate); conversational implicature (given general norms of conversation, we may infer that one who asserts that p speaker-means that q); or conventional implicature (given the meaning of ‘p’, one who uses ‘p’ in a speech act must also speaker-mean that q). Any account appealing to a notion of implication is obliged to tell us what kind of implication is at issue: Further, any such account must accommodate the following three data. 1. In addition to the better known omissive, ‘p but I don’t believe it’, an analogous commissive paradox is to be found in ‘p but I believe that not-p’. 2. Moorean absurdity arises when a person does not assert an omissive or commissive Moorean proposition but rather judges that it is true. Here is one account of the source of the absurdity of Moorean judgment. Suppose that I judge that (p & I don’t believe that p). On the assumption that judgment, construed as an episodic instantiation of belief, distributes over conjunction, I judge, and so believe, that p. This belief in turn falsifies the second conjunct of what I judge and so falsifies the whole conjunction. Although an omissive Moorean proposition can be true and can be judged true, it cannot be true if it is judged true. Moreover, discerning this fact about your own judgment of (p & I don’t believe that p) requires, as we just saw, a minimum of reflection. It is thus not difficult to see why one who judges true an omissive Moorean proposition is guilty of a severe failure of theoretical rationality, and thus why it is that his belief is absurd. Although an omissive Moorean belief is self-falsifying as opposed to a belief in a necessary falsehood (such as someone’s belief that it is raining and not raining) it is nonetheless like such a belief in the respect that both are severe failures of theoretical rationality. Consider now the commissive case. Suppose that I judge that (p & I believe that not-p). Then since judgment distributes over conjunction, I judge and thus believe that p. But what I judged is true only if I also believe that not-p. Thus what I judged is true only if I have contradictory beliefs about p, one of which must thus be mistaken. Moreover I should be able to see this fact with a minimum of reflection. This is again a severe failure of theoretical rationality,


11

and again an explanation of the absurdity of my judgment is ready to hand. This account of the absurdity of the two kinds of Moorean judgment seems simpler than that for Moorean speech, since the former, unlike the latter, need not rely upon pragmatic notions such as implicature, assertion, or expression. Instead we have seen two relatively clear senses in which one who believes either a commissive or omissive Moorean sentence must be in error in a way that would manifest itself to minimal reflection. As we will see below, some authors have fastened upon this asymmetry in the hopes of explaining the absurdity of Moorean speech in terms of that of Moorean thought. If the explanation of the absurdity of Moorean assertion can be delivered, with little further explanatory cost, in terms of the absurdity of Moorean thought, then one seems to get both explanations parsimoniously. 3. If possible, an account of Moorean absurdity should not appeal to controversial principles of epistemic or doxastic logic. Epistemic (doxastic) logic attempts to codify inferential relations among states of knowledge and belief as opposed to their contents. Candidates for such logical laws include the thesis that knowledge distributes over conjunction (one who knows that p & q knows that p and knows that q), and that belief is deductively closed (one who believes that p, and who believes that p logically entails q, believes that q; or even more strongly that if p logically entails q, and one believes that p, one believes that q as well.) While knowledge- and belief-distribution seem unexceptionable, other principles are controversial. For instance, it does not seem true as a psychological principle that a person’s beliefs are deductively closed: lack of attention or simply an absence of interest in the question may prevent a person from drawing consequences from her beliefs. Nor does it seem true as a psychological principle that a person who believes that p also believes that he believes that p or conversely. For example, my sincere professions of open-mindedness about the status of women or of lack of prejudice against them may both be mistaken. So I might believe that women are inferior to men without believing that I believe this. Equally, I might mistakenly believe that I believe that women are not inferior.

E. SCHOOLS OF THOUGHT CONCERNING MOOREAN ABSURDITY Authors developing accounts of Moorean absurdity may be seen as offering answers to the question, ‘In what does this form of absurdity consist?’ Attempts to answer this question generally bifurcate into two kinds. One explains the relevant sort of absurdity in terms of a severe failure of theoretical rationality, the other as a severe failure of practical rationality. In principle, each kind of approach can be applied either to Moorean judgment or to Moorean speech. Approaches

12

Introduction

to Moorean absurdity could thus, in principle, fall into four categories: Moorean Speech as Theoretically Irrational (I), Moorean Judgment as Theoretically Irrational (II), Moorean Speech as Practically Irrational (III), and Moorean Judgment as Practically Irrational (IV). Further, for a theory focussing on Moorean judgment (or speech) the question immediately arises whether it can be applied to Moorean speech (or judgment) as well. Theories of type (II) and (IV) have the advantage that they can make use of what we shall call Shoemaker’s Principle: What can (coherently) be believed constrains what can (coherently) be asserted, whereas the converse is not true.⁷ What can coherently be believed constrains what can coherently be asserted because assertion is, inter alia, an ostensible manifestation of belief. If what that assertion purports to manifest is incoherent, then the assertion will be incoherent as well. For instance, not only is it incoherent to believe, ‘I have no beliefs,’ it is also incoherent to assert it—not because the content of that assertion is necessarily false, but because the assertion purports to manifest a belief which, given the content, cannot be true. On the other hand, belief is not an ostensible manifestation of a speech act, assertion or otherwise. This is suggested by the fact that while it is incoherent to assert, ‘I am making no assertions ’ it is coherent to believe it. If Shoemaker’s Principle is correct, then a satisfactory account of Moorean judgment as theoretically irrational can be extended, via this principle, to an account of Moorean speech, at least for those cases in which the speech act is assertion. Similarly for an account of Moorean judgment as practically irrational. It is less clear whether an account of Moorean speech can be carried over to an account of Moorean judgment. We discuss eighteen approaches to Moorean absurdity under the four headings delineated above.

I. Moorean Speech as Theoretically Irrational 1. Self-report-of-belief-as-assertion This Wittgenstein-inspired approach construes assertion of ‘I believe that p’ as an assertion of p. Thus one who asserts ‘p and I believe that not-p’ has, given assertion-distribution (if one asserts that p & q, then one asserts that p and one asserts that q), asserted both p and not-p, thereby manifesting an extreme failure of theoretical rationality. Malcolm (1995), Linville and Ring (1991), and Jacobson (1996) hold that to assert ‘I believe that not-p’ just is to assert that not-p; Heal holds that it is in effect to assert that not-p. So my assertion, ‘p and I believe that not-p’ consists of (for Malcolm, Linville and Ring, and Jacobson) or requires (for Heal 1994: 296) two contradictory assertions. Evidently the reason why, on this approach, a Moorean utterance is absurd is that one making it ⁷ (1996: 76). This principle is anticipated in Wolgast (1977: 118).


13

commits herself to these contradictory assertions, and so manifests a severe failure of theoretical rationality. This approach requires treatment of the omissive case. Assertion of ‘I do not believe p’ neither constitutes nor requires the assertion of not-p. Goldstein (1993: 94–95) holds that if I assert that I don’t believe that p then I deny that p. This is incorrect: an agnostic who truthfully reports, ‘I neither believe that God exists nor believe that He doesn’t’ would, on that principle, be making contradictory assertions about the existence of God. Surely that is not so, and proponents of this approach have not addressed the problem raised by the omissive case. In a similar vein, Collins (1996) construes all self-ascriptions of belief, ‘I believe that p’, as ways of assigning the truth value T to p. This presumably is not meant as a semantic thesis, since on that view even the supposition that I believe that p would be an assignment of T to p; rather the intent is evidently that one who asserts ‘I believe that p’ assigns T to p. At the same time Collins provides a semantic analysis of ‘I believe that p’ as ‘If not-p, then I am mistaken about p’. On this analysis the sentence, ‘I believe that p, but not-p’ logically entails ‘I am mistaken about p’. But, Collins contends, ‘S is mistaken about p’ means ‘S assigns a truth value to p, and whatever that truth value is, p has the other truth value.’ As a result, assertion of ‘I am mistaken about p’ commits me to either, ‘I assign T to p, but p is F’; or to ‘I assign F to p, but p is T’. Collins claims (1996: 310) without explanation that both of these sentences express a self-contradiction. Yet without such an explanation a sentence such as ’I assign T to p, but p is F’ is at least as mysterious as our original Moorean sentences. Collins also does not address the omissive case.

2. Speaker’s implicature According to this approach, the speaker is said to contradict herself in her assertion of a Moorean sentence, but not by virtue of asserting an explicit contradiction. Rather she conversationally implicates a content that explicitly contradicts what she asserts (Martinich 1980; Levinson 1983: 105). Imagine a person who tells an evidently lost tourist, ‘There’s a Tourist Information booth around the corner.’ Here the speaker seems to suggest that those manning the booth are likely to help the tourist to find her way. But were she to add, ‘but they aren’t likely to help you find your way. You would do better to ask that cab driver over there’, then by explicitly denying the implicatum of her first remark she cancels or revokes it. Doing so would not make her sequence of utterances absurd. By contrast, if my remark ‘It’s raining’ conversationally implicated that I believe that it’s raining, then my adding, ‘but I don’t believe it’ would cancel that implicatum with no resulting absurdity. Yet that prediction is contradicted by the fact that such an utterance is absurd. So the absurdity of Moorean assertion does not seem explicable in terms of ‘imply’ when taken as conversational implicature. By contrast, one who describes someone as ‘poor but honest’ suggests, insinuates, or implies but does not literally say, that there is a tension of some

14

Introduction

kind between poverty and honesty, perhaps that being impoverished tends to make a person dishonest. This implication is due to the meaning of ‘but’, as suggested by the oddity of someone’s saying, ‘She was poor but honest, which is not for a moment to suggest that there is any tension between poverty and honesty.’ Cases of this sort are thus termed conventional implicature. Since an assertion can be made with virtually any words whatsoever, it is not plausible that any words or expressions could themselves have as part of their conventional meaning that the speaker believes the proposition they are used to assert. Nor could the implicatum in question be due to the indicative grammatical mood, which could be used by someone uttering a sentence for the purpose of putting forth a proposition as a supposition or a guess rather than an assertion. Furthermore, a convention is a practice that could have been otherwise, but it is not an optional feature of assertion that it is used for the manifestation or expression of belief. As Williamson (1996) has pointed out, a speech act not governed by the norm that the speaker believe its content to be true, would not be the speech act of assertion. Moorean absurdity seems explicable neither in terms of conversational nor conventional implicature.

3. Speaker’s representation Someone who asserts that p represents herself as believing, or knowing that p, and the state of affairs thus represented contradicts her assertion that she does not believe (or know) that p (Black 1952: Unger 1975: ch. VI; DeRose 1991, 2002; Williamson 1996, 2000: 252–60). Thus for instance, DeRose (1991) endorses an explanation of the absurdity of asserting ‘It is raining but I don’t know that it is’ given by Unger (1975: 252–65). According to DeRose If I ‘flat out’ assert that p then I represent it as being the case that I know that p (2002: 597–8)

Here a ‘flat out’ assertion is distinguished from assertions like ‘I think that p’ or ‘I’m pretty sure that p’ or ‘Maybe p’. So given that assertion distributes over conjunction, if I assert that (p and I do not know that p) then I assert that p and so I represent it as being the case that I know that p. But I also assert that I do not know that p. However, those who exemplify Moorean absurdity must be doing more than representing themselves as believing or knowing what they assert. Julie the art teacher can represent herself as, say, an astronaut by painting and displaying an image of herself in a spacesuit. In so doing, she may also represent herself as believing or knowing that she is an astronaut (perhaps she embellishes the drawing with a thought-bubble enclosing the words, ‘I’m in space!’). If she does so while remarking, ‘But I am not an astronaut ’, the performance generates no absurdity recognizably Moorean. Is the problem here that Julie has used pictorial rather than verbal representation? Surely not: She might represent herself as believing that she is an astronaut by supposing for the


15

sake of argument that she believes that she is one; she will generate no absurdity if she points out, in the process, that she has never left the troposphere.

4. Assertion as expression One cannot coherently assert a Moorean sentence ‘p but I don’t believe that p’ because asserting the first conjunct would express an intentional state, namely belief that p, that the second conjunct denies one is in (Rosenthal 1995a: 197, 199; 1995b: 317, 319): if I assert that (p and I don’t believe that p) then I assert that p and thereby express a belief that p. But I also assert that I don’t believe that p, ‘. . . thereby denying that the whole sentence can be used to make any coherent assertion’.⁸ It is not, however, clear how the second conjunct does in fact deny that the whole sentence can be used to make a coherent assertion. Perhaps the failure of coherence results from a contradiction between what is expressed (the speaker’s belief that p) and what the speaker asserts, that she does not believe that p. Yet beliefs, as opposed to their contents, are particulars and thus don’t stand in relations of contradiction, consistency, entailment, etc., to anything else. Short of an elucidation of the notion of expression showing it to be a mode of commitment but not a species of assertion, this expressivist position will not account for the explanandum. Nor does it provide any suggestions as to how we might approach the commissive case.

II. Moorean Judgment as Theoretically Irrational 5. Moorean judgment is self-falsifying or requires contradictory beliefs This approach was explained above in Section D.2 (Williams 1996, 1998).⁹ ⁸ (1995b: 317). On p. 319 of the same work, Rosenthal writes, ‘I cannot assertively produce the sentence ‘‘It’s raining but I don’t think it is’’ because asserting the first conjunct would express an intentional state that the second conjunct denies that I am in.’ (See also p. 324.) We shall, however, only take Rosenthal to be committed to the view that one cannot coherently assert the sentence in question. ⁹ This position is similar to Armstrong (1971), who defends a Lockean account of communication, according to which my act of assertion is my way of signaling to you my objective to get you to think me sincere. Deutscher comes close to the same position, but fails to clearly distinguish the omissive from the commissive paradox. Addressing the commissive case, he says, ‘What is wrong with ‘‘p but I believe that not-p’’ is this. If the speaker is correct then what he says is false’ (1965: 54). By ‘correct’, Deutscher means, ‘correct in believing the conjunctive saying’. But this is true only of the omissive case. In a modified analysis, Deutscher says, ‘if the speaker believes all that he says when he utters ‘‘p but I don’t believe that p’’, then it is logically impossible for him to hold any correct beliefs’ (1967: 184, our italics). This can’t be right, however. Although it is impossible that my belief that ( p and I don’t believe that p) is correct (because it is self-falsifying), this does not mean that I cannot at the same time correctly believe that p. Deutscher could have repaired this flaw by substituting, ‘then it is logically impossible for him to hold all correct beliefs’. That would hold true for both omissive and commissive Moorean belief, but would then fail to capture the essence of the absurdity, since my belief that I have at least one false belief fits that diagnosis without being absurd at all.

Introduction

16

6. The impossibility of undefeated evidence According to some epistemologists, a proposition p is warranted for S just in case p is in S’s belief system, there is adequate evidence for p, and that evidence is not ‘defeated’ by effective counterevidence. Following Klein, de Almeida remarks that warrant for a proposition can always be traced back to others of S’s beliefs. He thus suggests that we can speak of ‘warrant paths extending from the propositions that one believes to the propositions that one is entitled to believe given one’s present stock of beliefs’ (2001: 46). He also propounds a Rule of Revision: When a proposition p is added to a belief system, any belief that would block the warrant path to that belief must be removed from the belief system (2001: 47, citing Klein 1986: 266). Thus suppose that I believe that (p and I believe that not-p). Then by belief-distribution it follows that I believe p and that I believe that I believe that not-p. This latter belief is, de Almeida contends, a reason to refrain from believing p. Thus if I believe that (p and I believe that not-p), I violate the Rule of Revision. Similarly if I believe that (p and I do not believe p), then I believe both p and that I don’t believe that p. The fact that I believe that p gives me a reason for believing that I believe that p, which is itself reason for rejecting the belief that I believe that not-p. In both the omissive and commissive cases, then, de Almeida contends that Moorean propositions are ones for which one can have no non-overridden evidence.

7. The impossibility of justifying Moorean belief Williams (2004) adopts a principle that seems implicit in Gareth Evans’s Varieties of Reference (1982: 225–6) that Whatever justifies me in believing that p also justifies me in believing that I believe that p. by arguing that All circumstances that justify me in believing that p are circumstances that tend to make me believe that p. All circumstances that tend to make me believe that p are circumstances in which I am justified in believing that I believe that p. All circumstances that justify me in believing that p are circumstances that justify me in believing that I believe that p. He also assumes the plausible principle that Whatever justifies me in believing that (p & q) justifies me in believing that p and justifies me in believing that q. Now suppose that I enjoy justification for believing that (p & I do not believe that p). Then given the conjunctive principle above, I have justification for believing that p. By Evans’s principle, I enjoy the same justification for believing


17

that I do believe that p. But by the conjunctive principle, I also enjoy precisely the same justification for believing that I do not believe that p. This is logically impossible, because anything that justifies me in believing that something is the case renders me unjustified in believing that it is not the case and vice versa. To explain the absurdity of the commissive belief, Williams needs the different principle that Whatever justifies me in believing that p also justifies me in believing that I do not believe that not-p. Williams claims that this follows from Evans’s principle, together with the assumption that I am minimally rational and reflective: if I am at all rational then I will recognize the fact that whatever justification I have for believing that p renders me unjustified in believing that not-p. By Evans’s principle, whatever justification I have for believing that p is justification for taking myself to believe that p. But if I take myself to enjoy justification for holding the belief that p and recognize that this justification renders me unjustified in believing that not-p then I should take myself as not believing that not-p. Now suppose that I am justified in believing that (p but I believe that not-p). Then given the conjunctive principle, I again have justification for believing that p. By the new principle, this means that I enjoy the same justification for believing that I do not believe that it is not raining. But by the conjunctive principle, I also enjoy precisely the same justification for believing that I do believe that it is not raining. This is logically impossible, as we saw above. However Vahid (forthcoming) points out that as it stands, Williams’s argument for Evans’s principle proves too much. The conclusion of the argument is an instance of its first premise. Therefore on the basis of that argument we may construct a valid sorites for the highly implausible conclusion that All circumstances that justify me in believing that p are circumstances that justify me in believing that I believe that I believe that . . . I believe that p.

8. Moorean judgment requires contradictory beliefs Heal’s principle: If I believe that I believe that p then I believe that p, explains the absurdity of commissive Moorean belief as follows: If I believe that (p but I believe that not-p) then by belief-distribution, I believe that I believe that not-p. So from Heal’s principle, I believe that not-p. But again by virtue of believing the conjunction, I believe that p. But how is the absurdity of omissive Moorean belief that (p & I don’t believe that p) to be explained? Heal could try appealing to an analogous principle: If I believe that I don’t believe that p then I don’t believe that p. The possibility of omissive Moorean belief refutes this new principle, for now if I believe that (p but I don’t believe that p) then I do and I don’t believe that p. Moreover, the original principle taken together with the new one would prohibit a more sophisticated commissive belief. For if I believe that (I believe that q but I believe that I don’t believe that q) then it now follows that I do and I

18

Introduction

don’t believe that q: If I hold this commissive belief then I believe that I believe that q, so by the original principle, I do believe that q. I also believe that I believe that I don’t believe that q, which by applying the original principle and then the new one, means that I don’t believe that q.¹⁰

9. The irrationality of conscious Moorean belief Baldwin claims that I cannot be rational if I consciously believe a Moorean proposition since this requires me in the omissive case to ‘believe that I believe and fail to believe the same thing’, and in the commissive case to ‘believe that I believe and disbelieve the same thing’ (1990: 230). Baldwin presumably reasons that since my belief in the first conjunct is conscious then I believe that I believe that p, and since I believe the second conjunct then I believe that I don’t believe that p in the omissive case and I believe that I believe that not-p, in the commissive case. The first case is not accurately described as one in which I ‘believe that I believe and fail to believe the same thing’, for that would be a case in which I believe that (I believe that p and I don’t believe that p). Rather it is a case in which I have contradictory higher-order beliefs about whether I believe that p. Nor is the second case accurately described as one in which I ‘believe that I believe and disbelieve the same thing’, for that would be a case in which I believe that (I believe that p and I believe that not-p). Rather it is a case in which both my higher-order beliefs are correct only if I have contradictory beliefs about whether p. Deriving the single beliefs supposedly required needs the principle that belief collects over conjunction. This principle is disputable: I don’t seem to believe the conjunction of everything I believe. Further, the explanation does not clearly apply to the commissive case. Although in the omissive case I am irrational to believe a self-contradiction (if the principle is true) or to hold contradictory beliefs (if it isn’t), my belief in the commissive case that I hold them is less so, since my consciousness of my own irrationality may be my first step toward removing it. In a similar spirit to that of Baldwin, Kriegel (2004: 108–9) adopts the Brentano-inspired principle 1) If I consciously believe that p then I believe that (p & I believe that p)¹¹ to 2) I consciously believe that (p & I don’t believe that p)

¹⁰ Heal recognizes that her principle might be occasionally defeated. But Moorean belief is always absurd. Therefore the circumstances in which such principles are false are those in which the absurdity of Moorean belief persists. Hence the principles cannot explain the persistent absurdity. ¹¹ More accurately, Kriegel’s principle is: if I consciously believe that p then I believe that ( p & I myself believe that p). While we agree that this de se element is needed, ignoring it effects neither our exposition of Kriegel’s account nor our criticism of it.


19

to give 3) I believe that [p & I don’t believe that p & I believe that (p & I don’t believe that p)]. He then appeals to a second principle that 4) If I believe that (q & I believe that p) then I believe that (I believe that q & I believe that p) and claims that 3) and 4) entail 5) I believe that (p & I don’t believe that p & I believe that p & I believe that I don’t believe that p). Kriegel observes that the second conjunct of what I believe in 5) contradicts the third. So if I have a conscious omissive Moorean belief, then I have a self-contradictory belief. But 3) has the form I believe that (q & I believe that q) where q is p & I don’t believe that p. So all that 4) seems to yield is 5′ ) I believe that [I believe that (p & I don’t believe that p) & I believe that (p & I don’t believe that p)]. Perhaps Kriegel’s strategy is to apply 4) to the last conjunct of what I believe in 3), namely 6) I believe that (p & I don’t believe that p) and then replace 6) with what follows. But 4) cannot be applied to 6) because 6) does not have the form / believe that (q & I believe that that p). Kriegel’s account of the absurdity of the commissive belief (2004: 188 n. 28) is also flawed. He observe that 1) and 7) I consciously believe that (p & I believe that not-p) entail 8) I believe that [p & I believe that not-p & I believe that (p & I believe that not-p)]. which by 4) supposedly yields 9) I believe that (p & I believe that not-p & I believe that p & I believe that I believe that not-p). So if I hold the conscious commisive belie then I believe (among other things) that I hold contradictory beliefs. But what follows from 4) and 8) is 9′ ) I believe that [I believe that (p & I believe that not-p) & I believe that (p & I believe that not-p)]. Suppose instead that we apply 4) to the last conjunct of what I believe in 8), namely 10) I believe that (p & I believe that not-p) and replace 10) with what follows, namely

20

Introduction

11) I believe that p & I believe that not-p to yield 12) I believe that [p & I believe that not-p & I believe that p & I believe that not-p]. This is slightly different from 9), but still gives the result Kreigel requires. But now he needs the principle that if the content of what I believe entails so-and-so, then so-and-so is part of the content of what I believe. Without further qualification, this is false. I may believe that a triangle is equilateral without believing that it is equiangular. Kriegel can repair his account of the conscious omissive belief by using 1) plus the fact that belief distributes over conjunction: if the second conjunct of what I believe in 3) is true then I do not believe that p. But if the last conjunct of what I believe in 3) is also true then (since belief distributes over conjunction) I do believe that p. So 3) describes a self-contradictory belief after all. We get a different result for the commisive belief. If the second conjunct of what I believe in 8) is true then I believe that not-p. If the last conjunct of what I believe is also true then (since belief distributes over conjunction) I believe that p. But as kreigel himself notes (2004: 118 n. 28) a better result would be that if I hold the commissive belief consciously, then I believe that I hold a pair of contradictory beliefs. This result follows from 4) alone. If I believe that (p & I believe that not-p) then by 4) I believe that (I believe that p & I believe that not-p). But if I hold the commissive belief unconsciously, do I really think I hold contradictory beliefs?

10. Moorean belief entails contradictory beliefs if that belief is true and one believes the consequences of one’s beliefs Sorensen contends that (om1 ) p & I don’t believe that I believe that p and (com1 ) p & I believe that I believe that not-p seem less absurd to believe than their original counterparts and that as iteration of the belief operator increases, only omissive absurdity appears to decrease. Using the notation ‘Bn a∼p’ where the superscript denotes the number of iterations of the belief-operator (so that ‘B3 ap’ means that a believes that he believes that he believes that p) Sorensen writes (2000: 42): My solution endorses the intuition that ‘p & Bn ∼p’ is a Moorean sentence for all n, but ‘p & ∼Bn p’ need not be a Moorean sentence when n is a large number. ‘p & Bn a∼p’ does not entail that a has a specifiable directly opposed belief. But ‘Ba( p & Bn a ∼p)’ entails that a has directly opposed beliefs about p, under the assumption that a believes the consequences of his beliefs and that ‘p & Bn a∼p’ is true. This entailment follows directly for n = 1. When n >1, the entailment is secured by a necessary condition for self-attributing higher-order beliefs.


21

The condition in question is that if I believem+n that p then I believen that p (2000: 39–42) namely a recursive application of the principle of belief elimination: If I believe that I believe that p then I believe that p. Sorensen appeals to this principle together with the principle that belief is closed under logical consequence: If a logical consequence of p is q and I believe that p, then I believe that q. It follows that I cannot hold a true belief in com1 unless I hold contradictory, or ‘directly opposed’ beliefs about whether p (compare Sorensen 1988: 40–2). For if I believe that (p & I believe that I believe that not-p), then a logical consequence of what I believe is that p, so I believe that p. But if my belief in com1 is true then I believe that I believe that not-p, in which case the principle of belief elimination ensures that I believe that not-p. Since that principle may be applied recursively, the same diagnosis of the absurdity will hold for any order of iteration of the belief-operator, as, say, in com4 . It also applies to the original commissive belief, in which case the principle is not needed. Sorensen’s account diagnoses no such absurdity in om1 . If I believe that (p & I don’t believe that I believe that p) then a logical consequence of what I believe is that p, so I believe that p. But if my belief in om1 is true then I don’t believe that I believe that p, in which case the principle of belief elimination fails to apply. Sorensen must explain the absurdity of the original omissive case as follows: If I believe that (p & I don’t believe that p) then a logical consequence of what I believe is that p, so I believe that p. But if my omissive belief is true then I don’t believe that p. This is not, as Sorensen supposes, a case of contradictory beliefs but rather a flat contradiction. Secondly, I do seem to be absurd in some way if I believe om1 . For example, it would be absurd of me to believe that God exists but I think I am not a believer. Finally, Sorensen’s appeal to the truth of the principle that belief is closed under logical consequence is problematic. It is clear that it fails as a psychological principle. I may believe that a triangle is equilateral without believing that it is equiangular. Nor can it be true of me as a principle of ideal rationality, given Searle’s Principle (1992: 155–62): If I believe that p then I have the ability to think the occurrent thought that p. This principle explains why although we may intuitively suppose that a dog has rudimentary beliefs about the food in its bowl (which helps us explain its behavior as it strains at its leash) we hesitate to attribute to it the belief that it will be beaten in Lent. Clearly, it does not have the concept of Lent and so lacks the ability to think thoughts of Lent. The requirement also explains our difficulty in characterizing the beliefs of other species in any fine-grained way, since it is difficult to specify, using the linguistic expressions of our thoughts, exactly what

22

Introduction

concepts (or derivatively, thoughts) are available to those with radically different linguistic capacities and ways of behaving. Now suppose that I believe that Singapore is a democracy but have no idea what a plutocracy is. Since I cannot think the occurrent thought that Singapore is a plutocracy, I cannot think the occurrent thought that it is either a democracy or a plutocracy. So by Searle’s principle, I cannot believe that Singapore is either a democracy or a plutocracy. True, this will not stop me believing that the sentence, ‘Singapore is either a democracy or a plutocracy,’ states some truth or other. But that would be a different belief altogether. For one thing, it is not necessary that the sentence in question state what it does, because we could have used ‘plutocracy’ the way we now use ‘workers’ state’. Although I cannot think thoughts of plutocracy, I may still think the thought that a sentence that I don’t understand, states some truth or other. My ignorance of what counts as a plutocracy is an indictment of my knowledge, but hardly counts as a failure of ideal rationality. So if I am a maximally rational thinker, but I have no idea what a plutocracy is, I will see that my belief in the democracy of Singapore entails some truth or other that is stated by the sentence ‘Singapore is either a democracy or a plutocracy’. Moreover, I will believe that this sentence states some truth or other. But I will not know which truth it is. Nor will I believe that truth. This falsifies Sorensen’s principle, even as a principle of ideal rationality. A defender of Sorensen might endorse Robert Audi’s (1994) distinction between a dispositional belief and a disposition to believe. Then she could claim that Sorensen’s principle should be understood as saying that a maximally rational person is disposed to believe the logical consequences of her original beliefs. This move will not, however, help Sorensen. Since I am unable to think thoughts about plutocracies, I cannot form any beliefs about them (as opposed to forming beliefs about sentences). But then I cannot be disposed to form such beliefs either, simply because I cannot be disposed to form what I am unable to form. Moreover, since an infinite series of similar disjunctions are entailed by a first disjunct, the principle compels us to say that an ideally rational believer would believe (or be disposed to believe) each of an infinite series of similar disjunctions. Searle’s principle falsifies this prediction in the case of an ideally rational thinker who lacks the concepts needed to think the second disjunct. Sorensen tries to circumvent this difficulty by making my ‘thorough obedience’ to the principle a test of my degree of ideal rationality (1988: 37). But although we might admit that degrees of rationality are vague, surely there is a difference between total obedience and none. So what is missing from Sorensen’s account is a principled degree of disobedience to the principle that is distinctive of the degree of Moorean irrationality. This means that Moorean absurdity cannot be explained in terms of falsehood of the principle either. Is my failure to believe the logical consequences of all of my beliefs, a form of irrationality? If so, it is a very mild form. My failure to be disposed to form such beliefs seems even milder. By contrast, a Moorean believer is guilty of a severe irrationality.


23

III. Moorean Speech as Practically Irrational 11. The impossibility of Moorean assertion (because of misuse of language) When a person utters the words, ‘p but I don’t believe that p’, a presupposition of honest assertion, namely that one knows or believes or at least does not disbelieve what one is saying, is not met. Black thinks it follows that it would be neither true nor not true that the speaker has made an honest assertion. And from this, he infers that she has made no assertion at all. She has instead attempted to make an assertion but failed (Black 1952). But suppose I say, in exasperation to an obtuse psychiatrist who keeps on reassuring me that people aren’t persecuting me, ‘Look here, I bloody well know that they aren’t, but I can’t help believing they are!’ That would evince a rational recognition of my own irrationality. Couldn’t he understand what I was trying to say? Further, as we have seen, it is not clear how one might argue that it is impossible to believe ‘p but I don’t believe that p,’ as opposed to arguing that such a belief must put one in error.

12. The impossibility of Moorean assertion (because of assertability conditions) The speech acts of asserting p and of asserting that I think that p have, ‘. . . roughly the same conditions of assertibility. Any conditions in which I could say that p are conditions in which I could say I think that p,’ and the converse holds as well (Rosenthal 1995b: 320). Thus in response to the question whether it is raining, one could just as appropriately reply, ‘Yes’ as say, ‘I think so.’ Assume now that if p has a set p(AC) of assertibility conditions, then not-p has a disjoint set of assertibility conditions, that is p(AC) ∩ not-p(AC)={}; likewise that p(AC)=I believe p(AC). Thus, if ‘p’ is assertible for speaker S, then ‘I believe that p’ is as well; whence ‘it is not the case that I believe that p’ is not assertible for S. And if ‘I believe that p’ is assertible for S, then ‘p’ is as well; whence ‘not-p’ is not. Hence, assuming that assertion distributes over conjunction, any attempt to assert ‘p but I don’t believe it’ must fail, and one attempting to assert this Moorean sentence shows a severe failure of practical rationality. On the assumption that ‘not-p’ and ‘I believe that not-p’ also have roughly the same assertibility conditions, a similar account can apply to the commissive case.¹² Why, however, should it be granted that the assertibility (as opposed to the truth-) conditions for p and not-p are disjoint? If this is intended to flow from Shoemaker’s Principle, we shall need an argument for why it is not possible to ¹² Shoemaker (1996) offers a similar account in terms of ‘assent conditions’, that is conditions under which it would be appropriate to assent to a proposition, leaving conversational factors aside. He restricts discussion to what he calls ‘mental assent’, which is an episodic instantiation of belief—what others might call judgment. Shoemaker also espouses only one direction of the connection, namely that any condition under which it is appropriate mentally to assent to p is a condition under which it is appropriate mentally to assent to ‘I believe that p.’

24

Introduction

believe both p and not-p, or some other incursion into doxastic logic. To this end Shoemaker (1996) considers ‘assent conditions’, that is conditions under which one assents to a proposition. He restricts discussion to what he calls ‘mental assent’, which is an episodic instantiation of belief—what others might call judgment. He holds as well that one cannot mentally assent to p without mentally assenting to I believe that p, at least if both contents present themselves for consideration. Hence, if one mentally assents to p and I don’t believe that p, one mentally assents to p and to I don’t believe that p (by belief-distribution); but one’s mental assent to p entails that one also mentally assents to I believe that p if one entertains the question whether one believes that p. Thus, if one entertains this question, and mentally assents to the omissive Moorean proposition, one mentally assents both to a proposition q and its negation, thus showing a severe failure of theoretical rationality. Whether an analogous line of thought applies to the commissive case is unclear. It would require the further premise that if one mentally assents to the proposition I believe that p, then one mentally assents to the proposition that p if one considers whether p. We know of no sound argument on behalf of this conclusion.

13. The inexpressibility of Moorean belief Suppose that one could assert ‘p but I don’t believe it’. In that case the first conjunct would express belief that p, yet the second conjunct would express belief that not-p (Wolgast 1977: 119). But, Wolgast contends, one cannot believe both that p and not-p (1977: 118). For this reason one cannot use ‘p but I don’t believe it’ to express beliefs. Since, further, an assertion is an expression of belief, one cannot, contrary to our supposition, assert the Moorean sentence. Hence any attempt to assert this sentence must show a failure of practical rationality. For this account to be persuasive, we should need reason to deny that one can believe contradictory propositions. We would also need reason to believe that a disavowal of belief, ‘I don’t believe that p’, is also an expression of disbelief, namely that I believe that not-p. After all, someone who asserts ‘I don’t believe that God exists nor do I believe that He does not’ has not expressed the belief that God does not exist.

14. Moorean assertion as a self-defeating speech act Each speech act requires that certain conditions be met for it to be performed nondefectively. One who utters a Moorean sentence cannot use it to perform a nondefective speech act, and thus cannot use it to perform a speech act (Vanderveken 1980; Searle & Vanderveken 1985). For Vanderveken, this is due simply to his Postulate VIII that, ‘. . . no speaker can succeed in simultaneously committing himself to having a psychological state and asserting that he does not have that psychological state’ (1980: 264). The commitment to the psychological state in question is, of course, carried by the assertion of p: The speaker is committed to


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believing that p. Postulate VIII seems too strong, however. I could believe a set of propositions that, unbeknownst to me, imply that I believe that p. If in such a situation I were to say, ‘I do not believe that p’, I would seem to betray my inconsistency by means of a speech act rather than failing to perform a speech act at all. We note also that the present approach focuses on omissive Moorean propositions, and leaves it unclear how it is to be applied to the commissive case.

15. The speaker’s self-defeating intentions Someone who makes a Moorean assertion that p has self-defeating intentions due to her primary intention of imparting knowledge or instilling belief that p in her audience (Baldwin 1990, following a suggestion by Burnyeat 1968). Baldwin holds that if I assert that p to you then I have the primary intention that you will come to believe that p by recognition of this intention. In so intending I have the secondary intention to make you believe that p, as well as a secondary intention to make you believe that I believe that p. So when I assert that p, the second of my secondary intentions is to make you believe that I believe that p. But when I go on to assert, in the omissive case, that I don’t believe that p, the first of my secondary intentions is to make you believe that I don’t believe that p. So I intend to make you form contradictory beliefs about what I myself believe. And when I go on to assert, in the commissive case, that I believe that not-p, the first of my secondary intentions is to make you believe that I believe that not-p. So I intend to make you think that I have contradictory beliefs about whether p. This latter intention can only be strictly described as my single intention to make you believe both that I believe that p and believe that not-p. To derive this from my intention to make you believe that I believe that p, together with my intention to make you believe that I believe that not-p, would require other principles. Such principles would likewise be needed in the omissive case, in order to derive my single intention to make you believe both that I do and I don’t believe that p, from my intention to make you believe that I believe that p, together with my intention to make you believe that I don’t believe that p. Even if such principles could be provided and defended, it remains unclear why these intentions are supposed to be absurd. One way an intention can be absurd is by being an intention to bring about an impossibility. But given the possibility of contradictory beliefs I intend an impossibility in neither case. Perhaps the thought is instead that I will charitably assume, in the omissive case, that you will not be so irrational as to form contradictory beliefs. Thus I should be able to work out that my primary intention will be frustrated. And in the commissive case, I will see that you will not be so uncharitable as to think that I have contradictory beliefs, so I should again realize that my primary intention will be frustrated. But in the omissive case, suppose that I do intend to make you form contradictory beliefs (for example, in the fashion of 1984’s thought police), or that, in the commissive case, I do intend to make you think (or even let you know) that I am irrational in holding contradictory beliefs (for example

26

Introduction

as in O’Brien’s apology to Smith in 1984). Suppose further that I succeed. Now the absurdity of my assertion does not seem explicable merely in terms of the frustration of these intentions. By contrast, Jones argues that if I assert that p to you then I have the primary intention that you will come to know that p by means of your recognition that I intend this (1991: 185). He argues as well that this intention succeeds only if you believe that I know the truth of what I assert. Since assertion distributes over conjunction, if I assert that (p and I believe that not-p) then I assert that I believe that not-p. But Jones thinks that you will then ‘inevitably suppose that there is some reason’ why I believe that not-p (1991: 185) and thus you will not believe that I know that p. So you will not come to know that p, thus frustrating my primary intention. The inevitability of this supposition can be challenged (see Welbourne 1992: 238). Moreover, Jones does not consider the omissive Moorean assertion, ‘p but I do not believe that p’. However, Jones could repair his account as follows: if you believe that I know the truth of what I assert then you will believe that what I assert is true. So when I assert that (p and I believe that not-p) you will think that I believe that not-p. So you will not think that I know that p, since you will know that I cannot know what I believe to be false. Similarly, when I assert that (p and I don’t believe that p) you will think that I don’t believe that p and again you will not think that I know that p, since you will know that I cannot know what I don’t believe. So in either case, my primary intention is frustrated. Welbourne agrees with Jones that if I make an assertion to you then I have the primary intention that you will come to know what I assert because you recognize that I intend this (1992: 237), but thinks that this intention succeeds only if you come to believe that I know what I assert. But when I assert to you that (p and I don’t believe that p) I assert that I don’t believe that p. If you believe that I know that I don’t believe that p then you must believe that I don’t believe that p. So you must accept that a condition of my knowing that p (namely my belief that p) is not satisfied. Accordingly, you won’t believe that I know that p, so you won’t believe that I know that (p and I don’t believe that p) either. So I have frustrated my intention in asserting this, because I have told you in effect that I am insincere. Jones accounts for the commissive Moorean assertion in the same way on the assumption that a condition of my knowing something is that I don’t believe that it is false. We note that it seems plausible to say that I can only impart knowledge to you if I make you think I have the knowledge in the first place. (We further note that Jones needs the principle that if you believe that I know a conjunction then you believe that I know its conjuncts.) All three of these accounts assume that Moorean assertions only exemplify one intentional type. Jones and Welbourne think of asserting as letting know, where the assertor intends to impart knowledge, while Baldwin thinks of it as a case in which the assertor intends to instil belief. So lies fit neither Jones’s nor Welbourne’s account, since a liar does not intend to impart knowledge. One’s


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assertion may also be described as a provocative contention when one intends to ‘wind up’ her hearer. One’s intention in this case is to remain divided in belief and so it fails to fit Baldwin’s account. But the supposition that a Moorean assertor is lying or ‘winding her hearer up’ does nothing to remove the absurdity, especially since the hearer is rarely in a position to know the correct description of the assertion.

16. Social pragmatism The utterer of a Moorean sentence fails to meet the conditions given by Brandom’s social pragmatism (1983, 1994) for the making of an assertion. According to this approach, one who asserts that p undertakes justificatory responsibility for that proposition in the following sense: To an interlocutor’s challenge to that assertion with such words as, ‘How do you know?’, the assertor is obliged to reply with a justification (be it an argument, an appeal to sensory experience, or deferral to another’s authority). If such a challenge is made and the speaker gives an inadequate reply or none at all, she is obliged to retract that assertion. Doran holds that one who asserts both that p and that she doesn’t believe that p, cannot possibly fulfil both sets of justificatory obligations that this pair of assertions creates: Justifying p will prevent her from being able to justify her assertion that she does not believe that p, and vice versa. For this reason she cannot use the Moorean sentence to make an assertion (Doran 1995). Hence her utterance is severely practically irrational. Doran does not discuss the commissive case; evidently she would deny that a speaker could justify both an assertion that p and that she believes not-p. However, it is unclear what would prevent a speaker from justifying the claim that most spiders are harmless (by appeal to arachnidan evidence) and a further claim that she believes otherwise (by appeal to evidence concerning her own phobic behavior). Furthermore, from the premise that a speaker ought to retract a challenged assertion that she has been unable to justify, it does not follow that she has made no assertion at all; stubborn allegiance to untenable views is unfortunately all too quotidian. Accordingly, we need a fuller account of normative constraints on assertion to infer that assertion of a Moorean sentence is impossible rather than merely inappropriate.

17. The incredibility of the speaker Williams holds that an assertor offers his hearer the prima facie justification to believe him, in other words, to believe that he is sincerely telling the truth (1996: 136). But when the assertion is Moorean, the offer turns out to be worthless. For if you believe me when I tell you that (p and I don’t believe that p) then you must think that I believe that p (in virtue of believing me sincere) and also believe that I don’t believe that p (in virtue of believing that I tell the truth). So you have contradictory beliefs if you believe me. And in the commissive case, if you believe me when I tell you that (p and I believe that not-p) then you must think that I

28

Introduction

believe that p (in virtue of believing me sincere) and also believe that I believe that not-p (in virtue of believing that I tell the truth). So this time you must think that I have contradictory beliefs if you believe me. You thus cannot believe me in either case without being theoretically irrational or thinking that I am theoretically irrational. Williams contends that since an assertor should assume that both he and his hearer will charitably avoid ascriptions of irrationality if possible, the assertor is thus in a position to see with minimal reflection that he will not be believed in either case. Since being believed is the point of assertion, the assertor should see (again with minimal reflection) that his plan (to be believed) is bound to fail. So such an assertor is practically irrational. It may be doubted, however, whether an assertor who does not plan to be believed is thereby severely practically irrational. After all, one might feel sure, under interrogation, that the authorities think her guilty, and yet maintain her innocence with no intention of being believed. Further, it is not clear that the assertor of a Moorean sentence as Williams conceives her is always in a position to see that her plan to be believed is bound to fail. Perhaps she thinks it a reasonable bet that her interlocutor will simply take her at her word and find her inconsistent. In that case it is not clear that her Moorean utterance is severely practically irrational.

IV. Moorean Judgment as Practically Irrational 18. The incredibility of Moorean sentences Hintikka holds that ‘the gist of Moore’s paradox may be said to lie in the fact that’ the omissive proposition p and I don’t believe that p ‘is necessarily unbelievable by the speaker’ (1962: 67). He espouses the principle that ‘in the case of an individual’ a failure to obey the principle: if I believe that p then I believe that I believe that p, may be taken as impossible (1962: 67) He also holds that if I believe that (p and I don’t believe that p) then I believe that p (since belief distributes over conjunction) and so (from Hintikka’s principle) I believe that I believe that p. But since belief distributes over conjunction, I believe that I don’t believe that p. Thus I have contradictory higher-order beliefs about whether I believe that p, and Hintikka seems to take this to be impossible.¹³ Hintikka’s principle does not seem true as a universal law of psychology, given that my belief that p may be a prejudice that I fail to recognize within myself. Nor is its failure that of inconsistent belief. Hintikka could stipulate that my obedience to it, like my avoidance of contradictory beliefs, is a condition of ¹³ Shoemaker at one point also claims that Moorean belief is impossible (1996: 85–6). Presumably he would not on this basis hold that Moorean belief involves a severe failure of theoretical rationality. Likewise for Goldstein (2000: 86): ‘. . . we not only cannot assert Mooronically but also cannot believe Mooronically; why we cannot have a Mooronic attitude’.


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theoretical rationality. Then my Moorean belief would be impossible, given that I’m perfectly rational. Then, however, the account faces the problem, discussed above, of explaining the absurdity of my Moorean beliefs in circumstances such as self-deception that defeat my obedience to it.

F. O PE N QU E S T I O N S A N D C O N T R I BU T I O N S TO T H I S VO LU M E We have canvassed eighteen different attempts to explain Moorean absurdity. Not all these attempts appear equally viable, yet even after rejecting a substantial number of these we have a surfeit of candidate explanations. On the one hand this suggests the fecundity of Moorean absurdity as a source of philosophical speculation; on the other it raises the question whether such speculation might be all too ad hoc. If a candidate explanation is to be acceptable it must respect the desiderata formulated in Section D. In addition, however, a candidate explanation gains plausibility as it provides answers to one or more of the following, currently unresolved questions. We raise some of these questions below, indicating when a contribution to this volume offers an answer to it.

Does Moorean absurdity find precursors in philosophers before Moore? Sorensen in ‘The All-Seeing Eye: A Blind Spot in the History of Ideas’ (Chapter 2) finds isolated approximations to Moorean absurdity in Jean Buridan, Parmenides, Plato, Sextus Empiricus, Augustine, Descartes, Spinoza, and others. He argues that Moore’s paradox is the culmination of a critique of idealism within the analytic tradition and considers the history of theories of vision to provide a backdrop for the notion of a blindspot. In ‘Moorean Pretense’ (Chapter 11), Robert Gordon argues that Descartes’s Meditations can be seen as a form of Moorean pretence, for example Descartes’s pretence that that he falsely believes that he has a body.

Can Moorean Absurdity be given a grammatical characterization? In an effort rigorously to delineate our topic, some have sought a grammatical characterization of Moorean sentences. Jay Atlas, in his ‘What Reflexive Pronouns Tell Us about Belief: A New Moore’s Paradox De Se, Rationality, and Privileged Access’ (Chapter 6), argues that Moorean absurdity need not arise in an utterance of the form, ‘p but I do not believe it’. Rather, what is needed is an indirect reflexive pronoun such as ‘I myself’ whose proper use guarantees that the speaker knows that she is speaking of herself. On this basis, Atlas challenges claims by Moran (2001) that Moorean absurdity exemplifies a dichotomy between

30

Introduction

theoretical and practical approaches to the self. Atlas also challenges an argument offered by Shoemaker (1996) that if one believes that p, then one believes that one believes that p. He concludes more generally that the ordinary concept of belief does not bring with it a commitment to privileged access.

What sort of infraction generates the absurdity? We said in Section E that extant explanations of Moorean absurdity account for that phenomenon either as a severe violation of theoretical rationality, or as a severe violation of practical rationality. Is one of these the correct system of norms in terms of which to account for Moorean absurdity, or are there other systems whose violation might instead account for that phenomenon? Claudio de Almeida, in ‘Moorean Absurdity: An Epistemological Analysis’ (Chapter 3) offers an account of Moorean belief as a form of theoretical irrationality. He characterizes Williams’s (1994) analysis as: You rationally believe that p only if there is no simple and compelling argument that we can reasonably expect you to be aware of to the effect that your believing that p is either self-falsifying or ensures the presence of contradictory beliefs in your doxastic system. De Almeida argues that this account is both unnecessary and incomplete as an explanation of the absurdity of Moorean belief, and offers a rival account from which he draws general conclusions about the nature of justification. Thomas Baldwin in ‘The Normative Character of Belief ’ (Chapter 4) construes Moorean absurdity as consisting in a set of inconsistent commitments whether that absurdity be produced by an assertion or a belief. Baldwin motivates his approach with an analogy between judgments and performative utterances, and is careful to eschew what we described above (Section D.3) as principles of epistemic or doxastic logic in the course of his explanation. Finally, Mitchell Green (‘Moorean Absurdity and Showing What’s Within’, Chapter 9) offers an account of Moorean absurdity as violating either norms of theoretical rationality, or norms internal to speech acts such as assertion, while leaving it open in any given case whether it is the one or the other.

Does Moorean absurdity also come in forms involving other epistemic operators besides belief? For instance, ‘It’s raining, but I don’t know that it is’ sounds paradoxical to some. Similarly, ‘It’s raining but I’m not certain that it is’ sounds paradoxical to some. Other candidates include ‘I believe that Moore has two hands but I don’t believe that I know that he has two hands’ and ‘It’s raining but I know that I’m convinced that it’s not raining’ and even ‘It’s raining but I have no justification at all for believing that it’s raining’. Adler and Armour-Garb, in ‘Moore’s Paradox and the Transparency of Belief’ (Chapter 7) investigate the question with some care, concluding that only cases involving belief generate Moorean absurdity.


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Their reason is that only belief has the property of transparency: An attitude A is transparent to its content C just in case one who bears A to C is such that C holds (from their point of view). Belief is transparent, given this definition, whereas, for instance, desire is not.

May Moorean absurdity be exemplified in other speech acts beside assertion? Some authors claim that questions and imperatives can generate Moorean absurdity, as in, ‘What time is it? but I don’t want to know what time it is,’ or ‘Shut the door but I don’t want you to shut the door’ (Searle and Vanderveken 1985; but for dissent see Heal 1977). Others have argued that Moorean absurdity is found even when an indicative sentence is put forth with other than assertoric force, as in the case of supposition (Green 2000). Adler and Armour-Garb investigate the question, as does Green.

Might an account of Moorean absurdity provide a way of identifying further examples of this phenomenon? For example, are ‘I have no beliefs now’, ‘All my beliefs are false’, or ‘I don’t exist (as a believer)’, cases of Moorean absurdity? If ‘It’s raining but I’m convinced that I believe it isn’t’ is genuinely Moorean, is ‘It’s raining but I believe I’m convinced it isn’t’? If Superman informs me that I’m acquainted with him when he is disguised as another person, whom I think idiotic, is my remark, ‘I falsely believe that you are an idiot’, an instance of Moorean absurdity? (Crimmins 1992, discussed by Rosenthal 2002, Hájek and Stoljar 2001). Was Luis Buñuel’s remark, ‘I’m still an atheist, thank God,’ as he was banished from Spain for attacking religion, a case of Moorean absurdity? Acknowledging that this ability to identify further examples of Moorean absurdity is consistent with the inability to enumerate all such instances (Sorensen 2000), Williams (‘Moore’s Paradoxes, Evans’s Principle, and Iterated Belief ’, Chapter 5) notes Sorensen’s comment that om1 ) p & I don’t believe that I believe that p and com1 )p & I believe that I believe that not-p seem less absurd to believe or assert than om) p & I don’t believe that p or com) p & I believe that not-p. Moreover, as iteration increases, omissive absurdity appears to decrease, while commissive absurdity does not. Thus, with four iterations,

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Introduction

om4 ) p & I don’t believe that I believe that I believe that I believe that I believe that p seems less absurd to believe or assert than om1 , whereas the absurdity of believing or asserting com4 ) p & I believe that I believe that I believe that I believe that I believe that not-p seems undiminished. Williams argues that despite appearances, any belief in any iteration of om or com is equally absurd. However, he agrees that there is a decrease in the absurdity of an assertion of om) as iterations increase. He also defends a definition of Moorean belief: that any belief is Moorean just in case its content is (i) a possible truth that (ii) reports no irrationality in the believer, but (iii) it is impossible to have justification for that belief.

Is Moorean belief, insofar as it makes its holder absurd, conscious? André Gallois in ‘Consciousness, Reasons, and Moore’s Paradox’ (Chapter 8) argues that only consciously held attitudes can provide one with reasons for action or for the holding of an attitude. Gallois concludes that only consciously held beliefs are integrated with the rest of the self, and he accounts for the absurdity of a new species of Moorean absurdity. In the process he relates these issues to integration in fiction, and to different ways of attributing reasons.

Does having a Moorean ‘ring’ refute a philosophical position? Some philosophical positions seem to imply that it would be appropriate to say something having the form of a Moorean absurdity. For instance, an eliminativist in the philosophy of mind denies that there are any beliefs. She is thus committed to the following conjunction: ‘There are no beliefs, though I don’t believe it.’ Does this commitment refute her position? Alan Hájek’s ‘My Philosophical Position Says ‘‘p’’ and I Don’t Believe ‘‘p’’,’ (Chapter 10), investigates this question, attending to eliminativism about belief, the view that belief requires assignment of high or maximal probability, the denial of higher-order beliefs or higher-order probabilities, eliminativism about truth, pragmatism, relativism about truth, truth-value gluts or gaps, and the philosophical ‘meta-induction’ that all philosophical theories are false.

Is the study of Moorean absurdity crucially an investigation into the pathology of belief or other attitudes? It is natural to hold, given the absurdity of such thoughts or utterances as ‘P but I don’t believe it’, that Moorean absurdity is primarily of interest for failures


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or rationality. However, in his paper ‘Moorean Pretense’ (Chapter 11), Robert Gordon argues that the ability to pretend-true a situation such as is expressed by the just-quoted sentence may be a cognitive achievement. On his account, Moorean pretense is not absurd. It underlies Cartesian doubt, is rampant in modern science, and is a defining feature of dramatic irony. It may underlie the ability to understand that people’s behavior is sometimes based on false beliefs rather than on the actual facts. Most children gain this ability at about the age of 4. However, children with autism usually do not acquire it at all, and Gordon speculates that this failure may be tied to their well-established failure to engage in spontaneous pretense. REFERENCES Adler, J. (1999), ‘The Ethics of Belief: Off the Wrong Track’, Midwest Studies in Philosophy, 23: 267–85. (2002), Belief ’s Own Ethics (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press). Albritton, R. (1995), ‘Comments on ‘‘Moore’s Paradox and Self-Knowledge’’ ’, Philosophical Studies, 77: 229–35. Armstrong, D. (1971), ‘Meaning and Communication’, Philosophical Review, 80: 427–47. Audi, R. (1994), ‘Dispositional Beliefs and Dispositions to Believe’, Noûs, 28: 419–34. Baldwin, T. (1990), G. E. Moore (Routledge). Black, M. (1952), ‘Saying and Disbelieving’, Analysis, 13: 25–33. Bovens, L. (1995), ‘P and I Will Believe that not-P: Diachronic Constraints on Rational Belief ’, Mind, 104: 737–60. Brandom, R. (1983), ‘Asserting’, Noûs, 17: 637–50. (1994), Making It Explicit (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press). Brueckner, A. (1998), ‘Moore Inferences’, Philosophical Quarterly, 48: 366–9. Burnyeat, M. (1968), ‘Belief in Speech’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 68: 227–48. Castell, P. (1994), ‘Moore’s Paradox and Partial Belief ’, European Review of Philosophy, 1: 45–53. Clark, R. (1994), ‘Pragmatic Paradox and Rationality’, Canadian Journal of Philosophy, 24: 229–42. Cohen, L. (1950), ‘Mr. O’Connor’s ‘‘Pragmatic Paradoxes’’ ’, Mind, 59: 85–7. Collins, A. (1996), ‘Moore’s Paradox and Epistemic Risk’, Philosophical Quarterly, 46: 308–19. (1987), The Nature of Mental Things (South Bend Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press). Crimmins, M. (1992), ‘I Falsely Believe That P’, Analysis, 52: 191. Davis, W. (2002), Meaning Expression and Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). De Almeida, C. (2001), ‘What Moore’s Paradox is About’, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 62: 33–58. DeRose, K. (1991), ‘Epistemic Possibilities’, Philosophical Review, 100: 581–605. (1996), ‘Knowledge, Assertion, and Lotteries’, Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 74: 568–80.

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DeRose, K. (2002), ‘Assertion, Knowledge, and Context’, Philosophical Review, 111: 167–203. Deutscher, M. (1965), ‘A Note on Saying and Disbelieving’, Analysis, 25: 53–7. (1967), ‘Bonney on Saying and Disbelieving’, Analysis, 27: 184–6. Doran, K. (1995), ‘Moore’s Paradox, Asserting, and Skepticism’, Southwest Philosophy Review, 11: 41–8. Evans, G. (1982), The Varieties of Reference (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Forguson, L. (1969), ‘On ‘‘It’s raining but I don’t believe it’’ ’, Theoria, 34: 89–101. Gallois, A. (1996), The World Without, the Mind Within (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Gillies, A. (2001), ‘A New Solution to Moore’s Paradox’, Philosophical Studies, 105: 237–50. Goldstein, L. (1993), ‘Inescapable Surprises and Acquirable Intentions’, Analysis, 53: 93–9. (1988), ‘Wittgenstein’s Late Views on Belief, Paradox, and Contradiction’, Philosophical Investigations, 11: 49–73. (2000), ‘Moore’s Paradox’, in P. Engel (ed.), Believing and Accepting (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers), 65–92. Gombay, A. (1988), ‘Some Paradoxes of Counterprivacy’, Philosophy, 63: 191–210. Gordon, R. (2000), ‘Sellars’ Ryleans Revisited’, Protosociology, 14: 102–14. Green, M. (1999), ‘Moore’s Many Paradoxes’, Philosophical Papers, 27: 97–109. (2000), ‘The Status of Supposition’, Noûs, 34: 376–99. Hájek, A., and Stoljar, D. (2001), ‘Crimmins, Gonzales, and Moore’, Analysis, 61: 208–13. Hambourger, R. (1984), ‘Moore’s Paradox and Epistemic Justification’, Philosophy Research Archives, 10: 1–12. Harnish, R. (1980), ‘Searle and the Logic of Moore’s Paradox’, International Logic Review, 11: 72–7. Heal, J. (1977), ‘Insincerity and Commands’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 77: 183–202. (1994), ‘Moore’s Paradox: A Wittgensteinian Approach’, Mind, 103: 5–24. (2003), Mind, Reason, and Imagination (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Hintikka, J. (1962), Knowledge and Belief (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press). Jacobson, R. (1996), ‘Wittgenstein on Self-Knowledge and Self-Expression’, Philosophical Quarterly, 46: 12–30. Jacquette, D. (2000), ‘Identity, Indiscernibility, and Moore’s Paradox’, Synthese, 123: 279–92. Jones, O. R. (1991), ‘Moore’s Paradox, Assertion and Knowledge’, Analysis, 51: 183–6. Kind, A. (1993), ‘Shoemaker, Self-Blindness and Moore’s Paradox’, Philosophical Quarterly, 53: 39–48. Klein, P. (1986), ‘Immune Belief Systems’, Philosophical Topics, 14: 259–80. Kobes, B. (1995), ‘Telic Higher-Order Thoughts and Moore’s Paradox’, Philosophical Perspectives, 9: 291–312. Kriegel, U. (2004), ‘Moore’s Paradox and the Structure of Conscious Belief ’, Erkenntnis, 61: 99–121.


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Larkin, P. (1999), ‘Shoemaker on Moore’s Paradox and Self-Knowledge’, Philosophical Studies, 96: 239–52. Lee, B. (2001), ‘Moore’s Paradox and Self-Ascribed Belief ’, Erkenntnis, 55: 359–70. Levinson, S. (1983), Pragmatics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Lycan, W. (1970), ‘Hintikka and Moore’s Paradox’, Philosophical Studies, 21: 9–14. Linville, K., and Ring, M. (1991), ‘Moore’s Paradox Revisited’, Synthese, 87: 295–309. Malcolm, N. (1995), ‘Disentangling Moore’s Paradox’, in R. Egidi (ed.), Wittgenstein: Mind and Language (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers), 195–205. (1984), Ludwig Wittgenstein: A Memoir, 2nd edn. (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Martinich, A. (1980), ‘Conversational Maxims and Philosophical Problems’, Philosophical Quarterly, 30: 215–28. Milgram, E. (1994), ‘An Apprentice Argument’, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 54: 913–16. Moore, G. E. (1993), Selected Writings, ed. T. Baldwin (London: Routledge). (1944), ‘Russell’s Theory of Descriptions’, in P. Schilpp (ed.), The Philosophy of Bertrand Russell (La Salle, Ill.: Open Court) 175–225. (1942), ‘A Reply to My Critics’, in P. Schilpp (ed.), The Philosophy of G. E. Moore (La Salle, Ill.: Open Court), 535–677. (1912), Ethics (New York: H. Holt and Company). Moran, R. (1997), ‘Self-Knowledge, Discovery, Resolution, and Undoing’, European Journal of Philosophy, 5: 141–61. Olin, D. (1987), ‘On an Epistemic Paradox’, Analysis, 47: 216–17. Rosenthal, D. (2002), ‘Moore’s Paradox and Crimmins’ Case’, Analysis, 62: 167–71. (1995a), ‘Self-knowledge and Moore’s Paradox’, Philosophical Studies, 77: 196–209. (1995b), ‘Moore’s Paradox and Consciousness’, Philosophical Perspectives. (1998), ‘Thinking That One Thinks’, in A. Burri (ed.), Language and Thought (De Gruyter), 259–87. Searle, J. (1992), The Rediscovery of the Mind (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press). and Vanderveken, D. (eds.) (1985), Foundations of Illocutionary Logic (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Shoemaker, S. (1988), ‘On Knowing One’s Own Mind’, Philosophical Perspectives, 2: 183–209. (1995), ‘Moore’s Paradox and Self-Knowledge’, Philosophical Studies, 77: 211–28. Sorensen, R. (1982), ‘Recalcitrant Variations of the Prediction Paradox’, Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 69: 355–62. (1984), ‘Conditional Blindspots and the Knowledge Squeeze: A Solution to the Prediction Paradox’, Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 6: 126–35. (1986), ‘A Strengthened Prediction Paradox’, Philosophical Quarterly, 36: 504–13. (1988), Blindspots (Oxford: Oxford University Press). (2000), ‘Moore’s Problem with Iterated Belief ’, Philosophical Quarterly, 50: 28–43. Stalnaker, R. (2000), ‘On ‘‘Moore’s Paradox’’ ’, in P. Engel (ed.), Believing and Accepting (Dordrecht: Kluwer), 93–100. Szabo-Gendler, Z. (2001), ‘Fictionalism and Moore’s Paradox’, Canadian Journal of Philosophy, 31/3: 293–308.

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Unger, P. (1975), Ignorance: A Case for Scepticism (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Vahid, H. (2005), ‘Moore’s Paradox and Evans’s Principle: A Reply to Williams’, Analysis, 65: 337–41. Vanderveken, D. (1980), ‘Illocutionary Logic and Self-Defeating Speech Acts’, in J. Searle, F. Kiefer, and M. Bierwisch (eds.), Speech Act Theory and Pragmatics (Dordrecht: Reidel), 247–72. (1990), Foundations of Illocutionary Logic, i and ii, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Welbourne, M. (1992), ‘More on Moore’, Analysis, 52: 237–41. Williams, J. N. (1979), ‘Moore’s Paradox—One or Two?’, Analysis, 39: 121–40. (1982), ‘The Absurdities of Moore’s Paradoxes’, Theoria, 48: 38–46. (1994), ‘Moorean Absurdity and the Intentional ‘‘Structure’’ of Assertion’, Analysis, 54: 160–6. (1996), ‘Moorean Absurdities and the Nature of Assertion’, Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 74: 135–49. (1998), ‘Wittgensteinian Accounts of Moorean Absurdity’, Philosophical Studies, 92: 283–306. (2004), ‘Moore’s Paradoxes, Evans’s Principle and Self-Knowledge’, Analysis, 64: 348–53. Williamson, T. (1996), ‘Knowing and Asserting’, Philosophical Review, 105: 489–523. (2000), Knowledge and Its Limits, (Oxford: Oxford University Press). (2001), ‘Comments on Michael Williams’ ‘‘Contextualism, Externalism and Epistemic Standards’’ ’, Philosophical Studies, 103: 25–33. Willis, R. (1953), ‘Professor Black on Saying and Disbelieving’, Analysis, 14: 24–5. Winch, P. (2001), ‘The Expression of Belief ’, in T. McCarthy and S. Stidd (eds.), Wittgenstein in America (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 195–214. Wittgenstein, L. (1980a), Remarks on the Philosophy of Psychology, i, ed. G. Anscombe and G. von Wright (Chicago: University of Chicago Press). (1980b), Remarks on the Philosophy of Psychology, ii, ed. G. von Wright and H. Hyman (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980). (1980c), Culture and Value, 2nd edn., ed. G. H. Von Wright, trans. P. Winch (Oxford: Blackwell). (1974), Letters to Russell, Keynes and Moore, ed. G. H. von Wright (Oxford: Blackwell). (1997), Philosophical Investigations, 2nd edn., trans. G. Anscombe (Oxford: Blackwell). Wolgast, E. (1977), Paradoxes of Knowledge, (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press).

2 The All-Seeing Eye: A Blind Spot in the History of Ideas Roy Sorensen

In a letter to child-friend Mary MacDonald, in 1864, Lewis Carroll warned: Don’t be in such a hurry to believe next time—I’ll tell you why—If you set to work to believe everything, you will tire out the muscles of your mind, and then you’ll be so weak you won’t able to believe the simplest true things. Only last week a friend of mine set to work to believe Jack-the-giant-killer. He managed to do it, but he was so exhausted by it that when I told him it was raining (which was true) he couldn’t believe it, but rushed out into the street without his hat or umbrella, the consequence of which was his hair got seriously damp, and one curl didn’t recover its right shape for nearly two days.

In this passage, Lewis Carroll comes within inches of formulating the sentence G. E. Moore made famous: ‘It is raining but I do not believe it’. Why didn’t Lewis Carroll anticipate Moore? Carroll was a capable logician with an ear for peculiar sentences. And what about the capable philosophers who preceded Carroll? This question arose when I was writing a book on the history of paradoxes (Sorensen 2003). Study of Moore’s paradox had been a formative experience for me in graduate school. Finding a precursor of Moore became a pet project. My confidence was partly on general grounds. I was charmed by Stigler’s Law of Eponymy: ‘No scientific discovery is named after its original discoverer’: Russell’s paradox was discovered by Cantor, Jourdain’s Visiting Card paradox was discovered by G. G. Berry, and Moore’s paradox of analysis was formulated by C. H. Langford as an objection to Moore. (Yes, Stigler did not discover Stigler’s Law of Eponymy; Robert Merton has priority.) Stigler’s Law of Eponymy also works for relatives of paradoxes such as cognitive illusions and long overlooked counterexamples. A particularly germane example is Fitch’s ‘knowability paradox’—which Timothy Williamson (2000: 271) classifies as an ‘embarrassment’ rather than a paradox. Idealism, verificationism, and semantic anti-realism each imply that all truths are knowable. Yet Frederic Fitch (1963) proves, with surprisingly little logic, that there are unknowable truths of the form ‘p but it is not known that p’. Fitch forthrightly attributes

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the key insight to a referee report composed in 1945 on a manuscript he never published. Recent archival research has revealed the referee to be Alonzo Church (Salerno 2006). Since G. E. Moore published his discovery of the peculiarities of ‘p but I do not believe it’ in 1943, the timing and structural similarity of the sentences invites the conjecture that the ‘knowability paradox’ was inspired by Moore’s paradox. This legacy would be particularly fitting. The ‘knowability paradox’ points the arrow of logic precisely at Moore’s targets. Is ‘Moore’s paradox’ another tardy counterexample? I felt a precursor was likely. Sentences of the form ‘p but I do not believe it’ are simple to formulate. Indeed, they have common currency as expressions of surprise. Their oddity is salient. And there is a long history of commentary on similar sentences. For instance, analysis of the liar paradox ‘This statement is false’ goes back 2,500 years. The fourteenth-century logician Jean Buridan analyzes ‘I do not believe this sentence’ in his Sophismata. All philosophers know that the self-defeating nature of ‘I do not exist’ became a major preoccupation of philosophers after Descartes’s cogito ‘I think, therefore, I exist’. I did find a sequence of approximations to Moore’s paradox that initially seemed close enough. But on reflection, none of these stood up as genuine anticipations. To my chagrin, I had better luck finding anticipation of some of my own ideas in Blindspots. I am now inclined to think that there was a blind spot in the history of ideas. Access to Moore’s paradox required a configuration of background beliefs that only came into alignment in the twentieth century (and may fall out of alignment in the future). This consensus was a legacy of the revolution Moore led against the Hegelian idealists. Moore’s paradox is a child of analytic philosophy. And it is a counterexample to Stigler’s Law. I still hold out hope that Carroll’s humor contributed to G. E. Moore’s discovery. In his Commonplace book Moore (1962: 123) relates Descartes’s cogito to the dream passages from Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass. G. E. Moore, J. M. E. McTaggart, and Bertrand Russell, who dined together at Trinity High Table, were known as the Mad Tea Party of Trinity (Wiener 1953: 194–5). This was partly on the basis of their resemblance to, respectively, the March Hare, the Dormouse, and the Mad Hatter (see Figure 1). The direct connection between Moore’s paradox and the Mad Tea Party is with Moore himself. But one can also see indirect connections with Russell through his protégé Ludwig Wittgenstein and with McTaggart through his dissemination of Hegelian idealism. My thesis is that Moore’s paradox is the culmination of a critique of idealism within the analytic tradition. Moore instigated this rebellion. Russell soon joined him. However, the roots of Moore’s paradox extend deep into the historical strata.

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Figure 1. Alice at the Mad Hatter’s tea party, by John Tenniel

P R AG M AT I C PA R A D OX I N A N T I QU I T Y The phrase ‘pragmatic paradox’ only came into philosophical currency with D. J. O’Connor’s article ‘Pragmatic Paradoxes’ in 1948. But the phenomenon goes back to pre-literate folklore. The walls of Pompeii are festooned with graffiti (preserved by the volcanic ash of Vesuvius in 79 ). Some of the inscriptions lament the defacement: ‘I wonder, O wall, that you have not fallen in ruins from supporting the stupidities of so many scribblers’. Some of the stupidity is an affectation: ‘Everyone writes on the wall except me.’ This inscription shows that Pompeians on the street were familiar with pragmatic paradoxes (statements that are supported or undermined by the circumstances of their utterance). Like an analytic statement, there is internal evidence of the pragmatic paradox’s truth or falsity. The analogy with analytic statements leads post-Kantian philosophers to speak of ‘pragmatic contradictions’ and ‘pragmatic tautologies’. Evidence that ordinary people could appreciate pragmatic paradoxes can be dated much earlier. For pragmatic paradoxes were used by Greek playwrights. Some of the playwrights may have been influenced by philosophical discussion of the problem of false belief. Parmenides denied that we can think about what is not. It is not there to be thought about. This puzzle is reinforced by our tendency to model words as names. The meaning of a name is its bearer. So a name without a bearer is meaningless. If a sentence means what caused it to be uttered,

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then the meaningfulness of the sentence is sufficient for its truth. Belief is then just an effect. Alternatively, if beliefs represent what they most resemble, then its meaning is what most closely corresponds to the belief. But such correspondence is truth. Therefore, to interpret a belief as false is to misinterpret it. Sophists presented these arguments as support for Protagoras’ maxim that man is the measure: whatever you think is true for you and so is true (Theaetetus 161c–179c). Under the name model of meaning, error is hard to model. In the Sophist, Plato responded by distinguishing between believing (the propositional attitude) and what is believed (a proposition). When a student misspells ‘wine’ as ‘win’, he spells something but not what his instructor assigned. The mere fact that the misspelling best resembles an existing word does not make it a spelling of that word. Just as a letter can contribute to a spelling without itself be a spelling, a word can contribute to a statement without stating anything. ‘Theaetetus’ in ‘Theaetetus is flying’ is not a statement even though it does name an individual. Since Theaetetus is actually sitting, the sentence states something different than what is the case. That is how a sentence can be false. Whereas a false eye is not an eye, a false belief is a genuine belief in a false sentence. Plato’s strategy is to give partial credit to falsehoods. Falsehoods succeed enough to differ from gibberish but not well enough to qualify as a truth. He hopes to disqualify meaningless statements with the principle ‘Whenever there is a statement, it must be about something’ (Sophist, 262). However, this renders meaningless ‘There are flying horses’. Perhaps Plato could extend the spelling analogy by considering misspellings that get all the letters wrong. However, there would remain the problem of true negative existentials such as ‘There are no flying horses’. They do not correspond to any existing thing. Plato is aware that the very act of asserting a proposition sometimes provides evidence against that proposition. But he does not make more than rhetorical use of this phenomenon. In contrast, twentieth-century commentators try to refute ancient Greek philosophers by pointing out that their doctrines are pragmatically self-defeating. Speaking of when a Cyrenaic espouses his philosophy of life, C. I. Lewis writes: There would be no logical inconsistency in his hortation, ‘Have no concern for the future,’ if it should be found engraved by lightning on a rock. But for us to take seriously one who puts it forward, or for anyone to take himself seriously in accepting it, would imply exactly such concern as this injunction advises that we repudiate. (Lewis 1946: 481)

Greek philosophers attached little weight to this genre of criticism. They assimilated accusations of self-defeat to argumentum ad hominem and tu quoque. Since there is no genuine inconsistency in a pragmatic contradiction, no dialectical victory could be secured by pointing out a pragmatic contradiction. The Greeks never explicitly draw the distinction between pragmatic inconsistency and logical inconsistency. But the distinction is implicit in the rules governing dialectical games. The goal was to make your adversary contradict one

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of his earlier remarks. The speaker was free to say anything (however implausible) as long as it was consistent with what he previously asserted. For instance, he could assert ‘I am silent’ as long as he did not admit that he also spoke something. The speaker could also assert ‘I do not believe that I am silent’ because the two remarks are logically compatible. This logical purity is surprising because pragmatic inconsistency is important to lawyers. Law connects with philosophy because it is frequently studied as a preparation for a legal career. Juries are impressed by conflicts between word and deed. The British barrister Frederick Edwin Smith once cross-examined a young man who alleged that a negligent bus driver damaged his arm. ‘Will you please show us how high you can lift your arm now?’ asked the barrister. Grimacing, the man gingerly raised his arm to shoulder level. ‘Thank you,’ said Smith. ‘And now, please will you show us how you could lift it before the accident?’ The young man shot his arm above his head. The young man lost the suit. In litigation, self-refutation is potent stuff. In the classical dialectical games used to train lawyers, however, self-refutation was confined to logical contradiction. The content of one assertion had to conflict with the content of another assertion. As in mathematics, the preconditions of an assertion were not counted as part of what was asserted. The intent was to provide a neutral forum for ideas. In this setting, the dialecticians were open to whatever is rationally defensible. Only formal contradiction counted as a fair refutation. Skeptics entered the debate under these generous terms. For instance, Sextus Empiricus notes that some say it is self-defeating to deny the existence of the soul because the soul is needed to issue denials. But Sextus sees little merit to this question-begging maneuver. Even if the soul were necessary to make assertions, one would first have to prove that souls are required. The skeptic about perceptual knowledge will be unimpressed by testimony from the witnesses to the dialogue. AU G U S T I N E ’ S I N T RO S PE C T I V E T U R N The first philosopher who makes serious use of pragmatic paradoxes is Augustine. He renovates the old pragmatic paradox ‘I do not exist’ into a fourth-century cogito: I am not at all afraid of the arguments of the Academicians, who say, What if you are deceived? For if I am deceived I am. For he who is not, cannot be deceived; and if I am deceived, by this same token I am. And since I am if I am deceived, how am I deceived in believing that I am? For it is certain that I am if I am deceived. Since, therefore, I, the person deceived, should be, even if I were deceived, certainly I am not deceived in this knowledge that I am. And, consequently, neither am I deceived in knowing that I know. For, as I know that I am, so I know this also, that I know. (1872: xi. 26)

Augustine, by training, was a rhetorician rather than a philosopher. This made him less dismissive of pragmatic paradoxes. His conversion to Christianity also

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made him take ad hominem considerations seriously. Christianity originated as a persecuted religion of the poor and oppressed. So the emphasis was on what could be privately maintained however humble one’s circumstances. Christ’s warning of an imminent apocalypse reduced the attraction of projects that competed with the cultivation of one’s soul. This introspective turn made Augustine unprecedentedly concerned with mental states. I agree with Myles Burnyeat’s (1982) judgment that Augustine was the first philosopher to draw the subjective–objective distinction. Subsequent Christians elaborated this inward perspective. On the ethical front, there was a growth in intention-based ethics running from Abelard to Ockham. On the metaphysical front, there was an elaboration of a subjective style of metaphysics in which Plato’s forms are analyzed as the ideas of God. Our ideas seem to be based on perception—especially on our eyes. Vision is the master sense for human beings. If reality is fundamentally abstract, as Plato contends, perception should not be a source of knowledge. But the eye is so important to human beings that philosophers commonly use visual models of knowledge. This includes philosophers who are officially skeptical about perceptual knowledge: And the soul is like the eye: when resting upon that on which truth and being shine, the soul perceives and understands and is radiant with intelligence; but when turned towards the twilight of becoming and perishing, then she has opinion only, and goes blinking about, and is first of one opinion and then of another, and seems to have no intelligence. (Republic, V. 88)

Plato associates darkness with ignorance and light with knowledge even though he elsewhere disparages vision as a source of knowledge. Augustine inherits this tendency from Plato and magnifies the light–dark contrast (perhaps as residue of his Manichean phase). So how can one represent the eye in a ‘God’s-eye view’ of the world? One answer is through the icon of the all-seeing eye. This symbol dates back to the ancient Babylonians. It represents the watchful and protective power of the Supreme Being. On the American one-dollar bill the all-seeing eye appears to the left of the inscription in ‘In God we trust’ (as part of the Great Seal of the United States). If God exists, then his perspective converges with reality. There is an intensional equivalence between what God perceives and what there is. Thus the all-seeing eye foreshadows idealism: To be is to be perceived (from the perfect perspective). By the nineteenth century, idealist poet-philosophers used visual imagery to express pantheistic rapture: In the woods we return to reason and faith. There I feel that nothing can befall me in life,—no disgrace, no calamity (leaving me my eyes), which nature cannot repair. Standing on the bare ground,—my head bathed by the blithe air, and uplifted into infinite space,—all mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent eye-ball; I am nothing;

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I see all; the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part and particle of God. (Emerson 1836: ch. 1)

Among the utilitarians, the all-seeing-eye influenced prison design. Jeremy Bentham believed that having prisoners under constant surveillance would reduce misbehavior. Accordingly, he proposed that the guard tower be a cylindrical structure going up the middle of the building. Two ‘panopticons’ were actually built. D E S C A RT E S ’ S I N H O S PI TA B L E B AC KG RO U N D René Descartes presents himself as a revolutionary, discontinuous with scholastic philosophy. But he really extends the introspective tradition pioneered by Augustine. Descartes was immersed in Augustine’s writings (which mentions the cogito seven times) as part of his Catholic education at La Fleche. Descartes does diverge from the scholastics in the way he presses the skeptic into the service of epistemology. The test for knowledge becomes its defensibility in the face of skeptical attack. The cogito is the centerpiece of Descartes’s philosophy, not just an interesting limited case. Self-defeating doubts became a general philosophical resource. Philosophers in the wake of Descartes became sensitized to pragmatic inconsistency. Spinoza (1632–77) makes a side-remark that constitutes a surface anticipation of Moore’s paradox: If anyone says, then, that he has a clear and distinct, that is, a true idea of substance and nevertheless doubts whether such substance exists, he is like one who says he has a true idea and yet doubts whether it may not be false. (Ethics 1 p8 s2)

Spinoza is picking up on the problem of ascribing a specific error to oneself. But the insight is lost in the sauce. Spinoza is an irrealist about error. His arguments echo those addressed by Plato: An idea of something must correspond to it. An idea that succeeds in corresponding is a true idea. So all ideas are true ideas. Spinoza also appeals to Parmenides’ theme that error is about what is not. What is not is not there to be erred over. In a similar spirit, Spinoza treats error as a privation and privations as unreal. In addition to supporting old obstacles to an understanding of Moore’s paradox, Spinoza’s theory of judgment creates some new ones. According to Spinoza, thinking is believing. We never neutrally entertain a proposition. The appearance of neutrality is due to a tie between belief and disbelief. We assert the stronger of our beliefs. If the stronger belief is forgotten then the weaker one will reassert itself. Therefore, any time we think about both sides of an issue, we are latently inconsistent. Since neutrality is impossible ‘p but I am neutral about p’ has a contradictory conjunct and so is itself a contradiction. Thus Spinoza’s view of thinkers as hyper-opinionated elbows out the omissive version of Moore’s problem.

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No philosopher before Frank Ramsey (1903–30) has a decent theory of belief. So the infrastructure for a nuanced understanding of Moore’s absurdity was not present in seventeenth-century philosophy. Nevertheless, Spinoza’s theory of judgment did provide the service of resisting some Cartesian doctrines that harm understanding of Moore’s paradox. One of these Cartesian doctrines is voluntarism. Descartes maintained that you choose what to believe (B. Williams 1978: 163–83). God always gives us a fair opportunity to believe just what is true. But because we are free agents, we often form beliefs without sufficient evidence. Voluntarism is incompatible with the lessons taught by Moore’s sentence. If one can decide to believe then one could, through an act of will, believe that ‘It is raining but I do not believe it’. Credence would be like jam that can be spread on anything at will. If there were a limit to your credence, you would have to be careful not to run out—lest you suffer the fate of Lewis Carroll’s incredulous friend. Descartes also maintained that contradictions are only contingently false. God, in his Omnipotence, could make ‘It is raining and it is not raining’ true. This undermines a key contrast favored by commentators on Moore’s paradox: contradictions are necessary falsehoods while Moore’s sentences are contingent. Moore’s early essay ‘Necessity’ shows that he also lacked the contrast prior to 1900. He argues that there are no analytic truths (1900: 296). Contradictions are not even judgments. The necessary contrast only emerges after Wittgenstein’s Tractatus. In addition to containing provocative ideas about the nature of necessity, it also develops Arthur Schopenhauer’s key analogy between the I and the eye. T H E D I S C OV E RY O F T H E B L I N D S P OT Johannes Kepler’s work with telescopes led him to suggest that the eye works like a camera obscura, producing an upside-down image by means of a lens. In Dioptrique, Descartes reports an experiment that confirms this hypothesis. Descartes looked through the eyeball of an ox. Descartes further held that perception is nothing but a movement transmitted through the nerves. Edme Mariotte reasoned that vision should therefore be strongest where the nerve was directly hit by moving particles carrying the optical information. Leonardo da Vinci had made the same conjecture. But Mariotte tested it. He projected an image exactly on to that spot. You can do the same with the spots below: ◦

+

Cover your right eye and gaze at the plus sign. Move the page back and forth. The dot will disappear when it falls on your blind spot. This was completely unexpected because camerae obscurae do not have blind spots. The camera obscura does have a single hole in front where the light enters and produces an upside-down image on the background. Mariotte wondered why he did not have a big black hole in his visual field. Mariotte also wondered by no one had previously noticed this blindness in the center of the visual field.

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Edme Mariotte’s results were published and his experiment became popular in Paris, especially in the Académie des Sciences that he helped to found in 1666. Mariotte demonstrated his discovery in the King’s Library (the later Bibliothèque Nationale). Even the King of England invited him to perform his experiment. Astronomers were intrigued because the blind spot suggested a physiological explanation of why they often lost sight of a star while watching another star. There was unresolved controversy about the significance of the blind spot. Mariotte thought the blind spot showed that the retina was not the receptive organ of sight. Jean Pecquet maintained that the blind spot was caused by the shadow of a retinal blood vessel. The blind spot only began to be understood with the assimilation of Kant’s theme that the mind constructs the visual scene. The blind spot is not simply an area of non-representation. The brain actively fills in the blind spot—usually getting it right. If the background is red, then the spot will be filled in as red. If the background is striped, then the spot will be filled in to preserve this pattern. This filling in should be contrasted with visual effects that involve passive failures of representation. When you look at a star, you see dim stars off to the side. But when you focus on these dim stars, they seem to disappear. The reason is that the center of your visual field is packed with cones while rods dominate the periphery. Rods require less light. So shifting your focus (which works well in daylight conditions) has the effect of making the dim stars invisible. In Color and Vision, Arthur Schopenhauer made a Kantian study of Goethe’s theory of vision. He opens ‘On seeing and color’ (1814) with the assertion that every perception is the product of reason. Perception is not passive absorption of data from the external world. Instead, the mind creates phenomena by imposing a spatial-temporal framework and dictating laws to which all objects must conform to count as objects. The mind is in charge, restlessly interpolating to get a coherent picture of reality. Instead of perceiving a black hole where there is no retinal stimulation, the active brain ‘fills in’ the gap in accordance with its surroundings. Schopenhauer used the blind spot to impart an ironic twist to the classical connection between knowledge, sight, and the self: ‘. . . the ‘‘I’’ is the dark point in consciousness, as on the retina the exact point at which the nerve of sight enters is blind, as the brain itself is entirely without sensation, the body of the sun is dark, and the eye sees all except itself’ (1883: iii. 282). Like the eye, the I is the ‘center of all existence’ and yet is not present to consciousness or experience. In the subjective sense, the ‘blind spot’ is an unreceptive portion of one’s representation. In the objective sense, the blind spot is the part of reality that is not covered by this unreceptive portion. Schopenhauer takes the ambiguity full circle by characterizing the eye itself as a missing objective element of one’s representation. Schopenhauer’s self is an inaccessible entity. It is piece of metaphysics that captivated the young Ludwig Wittgenstein. By the time Wittgenstein wrote the

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Tractatus, he considered all metaphysics to be a linguistic illusion. However, he continued to be mesmerized by the analogy. To incorporate the I-eye analogy into his logical framework, Wittgenstein interpreted the eye geometrically rather than organically. This is the beginning of a formal accessibility relation (so pivotal in the development of modern modal logic). Wittgenstein’s semantic views forbid him from agreeing with Schopenhauer that idealism is false. Instead, Wittgenstein must conclude that idealism is nonsensical. In the Tractatus, Wittgenstein claims that solipsism converges with realism: 5.633 Where in the world is a metaphysical subject to be found? You will say that this is exactly like the case of the eye and the visual field. But really you do not see the eye. And nothing in the visual field allows you to infer that it is seen by an eye.

If the self is a boundary of reality rather than an element within reality, there is a convergence between solipsism and realism. Wittgenstein closely associates solipsism and idealism. After all, if one drives idealism to its logical conclusion, then to be is to be perceived by me. The experiences of others are only available to me as I experience them. This perspectivalism is frequently overlooked. Peter Geach incorrectly uses Wittgenstein’s model to defend the claim that a non-spatial perceiver can see everything: It is perfectly easy to conceive of an observer who contemplates the whole of a space without himself being located in that space; as Wittgenstein said in the Tractatus, the eye isn’t anywhere in the visual field. We can thus imagine, so to say, an eye of God which looks upon all space impartially. (Geach 1979: 101)

Wittgenstein’s geometrical eye involves a point of view. It has a location. It has an idiosyncratic range of access and a special kind of blindness. This was salient to G. E. Moore because he took notes of Wittgenstein’s 1930–33 lectures, And he seemed to be quite definite on a point which seems to me certainly true, viz. that I might see without physical eyes, and even without having a body at all; that the connection between seeing and physical eyes is merely a fact learnt by experience, not a necessity at all; though he also said that ‘the visual field’ has certain internal properties, such that you can describe the motion of certain things in it as motions towards or away from ‘your eye’; but that here ‘your eye’ does not mean your physical eye, not yet anything, whatever which is in the visual field. He calls ‘your eye’, in this sense, ‘the eye of the visual field’, and said that the distinction between motion towards it and away from it was ‘on the same level’ as ‘the distinction between ‘‘curved’’ and ‘‘straight’’ ’. (Moore 1955: 11)

As stressed by David Sanford (1983), Wittgenstein’s point about there being motion toward and away from the geometrical eye puts the eye in space and confers indexical properties. So what stops Wittgenstein from discovering Moore’s paradox? One problem is that Wittgenstein shares his teachers’ (Russell and Moore) view that contradictions are not really judgments. Tautologies and contradictions are ‘senseless’.

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Wittgenstein also denies that contradictions can be believed. He converts the Cartesian picture of what thinking ought to be into a picture of what thinking must be. Thinking must be clear and distinct. Thinking is a kind of picturing. Therefore, ‘It is as impossible to represent in language anything that ‘‘contradicts logic’’ as it is in geometry to represent by its coordinates a figure that contradicts the laws of space, or to give the coordinates of a point that does not exist’ (Tractatus, 3.032). This resonates with many contemporary philosophers because they accept truth conditional semantics. They reason: To understand a statement is to understand its truth-conditions. To understand a statement’s truth-conditions is to know when it is true and when it is false. So if you understand a contradiction, you know that it is false because you realize that it is false under all conditions. Therefore, you cannot believe a contradiction. Moorean sentences would be nonsense insofar as they are inconsistent. They would not be consistent descriptions that cannot be consistently believed. Belief does not require clear understanding. Obscurity sometimes enhances credibility. The early feminist Rachel Strachey had memorable conversations with her uncle Bertrand Russell: ‘Uncle Bertie has been here for two nights—we have had long and very interesting discussions on politics and Suffrage, and I think I agree with his views—one can’t be sure for he puts them too clearly’ (Halpern 1998: 79). Wittgenstein’s objection to the credibility of contradictions is not simply that one would recognize their falsehood. For Wittgenstein also denied that anyone can believe a tautology. A picture that is compatible with everything is not a picture at all. Only contingent propositions are objects of belief. Wittgenstein initially assumed that all contingent propositions are objects of belief. Later he became more interested in apparent exceptions.

MOORE’S LINGUISTIC TURN Moore’s opposition to idealism led him to distinctions that were later used to exploit the Schopenhauer-Wittgenstein analogy. These are linguistic and logical distinctions. So the geometrical and ophthalmological character of the analogy disappear. In ‘The Refutation of Idealism’, G. E. Moore concedes that it is difficult to distinguish between things and things as we are conscious of them. Nevertheless, he believes that the method of introspection can separate consciousness from the object of consciousness. . . . the moment we try to fix our attention upon consciousness and to see what, distinctly, it is, it seems to vanish: it seems as if we had before us a mere emptiness. When we try to introspect the sensation of blue, all we can see is the blue; the other element is as if

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it were diaphanous. Yet it can be distinguished if we look attentively enough, and know that there is something to look for. (1903: 450)

In Principia Ethica, this psychological method of drawing the distinction is supplemented with an embryonic linguistic method: It is often pointed out that I cannot at any given moment distinguish what is true from what I think so: and this is true. But though I cannot distinguish what is true from what I think so, I always can distinguish what I mean by saying that it is true from what I mean by saying that I think so. For I understand the meaning of the supposition that which I think true may nevertheless be false. (1902: 132)

Moore later incorporated this distinction between p and I think that p into his distinction between asserting and implying. He deploys the assert-imply distinction against subjective analyses of concepts. The maiden voyage of this distinction was in a criticism of Charles Stevenson’s (1942: 80) thesis that ‘It was right of Brutus to stab Caesar’ means ‘I now approve of Brutus’ stabbing of Caesar’. Moore agrees that the speaker implies that he approves of the stabbing but he denies that this is what the assertion means. When Moore says ‘I went to the pictures last Tuesday’, Moore implies his belief that he went to the pictures last Tuesday but that is not part of the content of the assertion. True, there is something odd about ‘The stabbing was right but I do not approve of it’. But this is only odd in the way the following statement is odd: ‘I went to pictures last Tuesday but I do not believe it’. The speaker may be pragmatically contradicting himself but his assertion is not a contradiction. If the speaker’s approval were part of the meaning of ‘The stabbing was right’, then there should be a semantic contradiction in ‘The stabbing was right but I do not believe it’. Moore explains the absurdity of ‘I went to the picture show last Tuesday but I do not believe it’ as a conflict between what the speaker asserts and what he implies. The speaker asserts that he does not believe that he went to the pictures last Tuesday but implies that he believes that he went to the pictures last Tuesday. Moore went on to offer a solution to the paradox. He maintains that we almost always believe what we say—so it is statistically surprising that we are found saying what we do not believe. This solution is generally regarded as a poor one—even as a naïve underestimate of the frequency of lying. However, one need not solve a paradox to be its discoverer. One need only provide the means for recognizing the paradox as a paradox. REFERENCES Augustine (1872), City of God, trans. M. Dods (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark). Burnyeat, M. F. (1982), ‘Idealism and Greek Philosophy: What Descartes Saw and Berkeley Missed’, Philosophical Review, 91/1: 3–40. Emerson, Ralph Waldo (1836), Nature (New York: Scholar’s facsimiles & reprints, 1940).

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Fitch, Frederic (1963), ‘A Logical Analysis of Some Value Concepts’, Journal of Symbolic Logic, 28/2: 135–42. Geach, Peter T. (1979), Truth, Love and Immortality, (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press). Gregory, Richard (1997), Eye and Brain (5 edn., Princeton: Princeton University Press). Halpern, Barbara Strachey (1998), ‘Ray Strachey—A Memoir’, in Wayne K. Chapman and Janet M. Manson (eds.), Women in the Milieu of Leonard and Virginia Woolf: Peace, Politics, and Education (New York: Pace University Press). Lewis, C. I. (1946), Analysis, Knowledge, and Valuation (La Salle, Ill.: Open Court). Moore, G. E. (1900), ‘Necessity’, Mind,  9: 289–304. (1902), Principia Ethica (New York: Prometheus, 1988). (1903), ‘The Refutation of Idealism’, Mind, 12/48 (Oct. 1903), 433–530. (1942), ‘A Reply to My Critics’, in Paul Arthur Schlipp (ed.), The Philosophy of G. E. Moore (La Salle, Ill.: Open Court). (1955), ‘Wittgenstein’s Lectures in 1930–1933’, Mind, 64/253: 1–27. (1962), The Commonplace Book 1919–1953 (London: Allen & Unwin). O’Connor, D. J. (1948), ‘Pragmatic Paradoxes’, Mind, 79/314: 358–9. Salerno, Joseph (2006), ‘Who Discovered Fitch’s Paradox and Why Won’t it Go Away?’, Pacific Division of the APA. Sanford, David (1983), ‘Impartial Perception’, Philosophy, 58: 392–5. Schopenhauer, Arthur (1883), The World as Will and Idea, trans. R. B. Haldane and J. Kemp (Routledge and Kegan Paul; 9th impression 1950). Sorensen, Roy (1988), Blindspots (Oxford: Clarendon Press). (2003), A Brief History of the Paradox (New York: Oxford University Press). Stevenson, C. L. (1942), ‘Moore’s Arguments against Certain Forms of Ethical Naturalism’, in Paul Arthur Schlipp (ed.), The Philosophy of G. E. Moore (La Salle, Ill.: Open Court). Stigler, Stephen (1999), Statistics on the Table (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press). Wiener, Norbert (1953), Ex-prodigy (New York: Simon and Schuster). Williams, Bernard (1978), Descartes: The Project of Pure Enquiry (New York: Penguin). Williamson, Timothy (2000), Knowledge and its Limits (Oxford: Oxford University Press).


PART II M O O R E ’ S PA R A D OX A N D K N OW L E D G E


3 Moorean Absurdity: An Epistemological Analysis Claudio de Almeida

In view of what the philosophical imagination has done with Moore’s paradox,¹ there should be no doubt that Moorean Absurdity may be symptomatic of a number of philosophical ills (that is, the kind of flaw of intellectual or moral character that philosophers seek to understand). A main concern for those who have been influential in the debate about the problem is explaining why a Moore-absurd belief is a case of irrationality. Indeed, whatever else may truly be said about it, we will not have found a satisfactory account of Moorean Absurdity until we have an unobjectionable explanation of this peculiar form of doxastic irrationality. But, even though much exciting work has been done along these lines, most, if not all, of the available explanations are based on what many of us see as unreasonable constraints on the concept of doxastic rationality. It is, however, hard to believe that anyone would object to the view that, if a Mooreabsurd belief makes you incoherent, it is irrational for you to hold that belief. In what follows, I both argue for the antecedent of this conditional—thus putting forward what seems to me a satisfactory explanation of Moorean Absurdity— and try to show that it has far-reaching consequences for epistemology.

W I L L I A M S ’ S WAY John N. Williams (1994) made a definitive contribution to the study of Moorean Absurdity when he noticed that those contingent propositions the assertion of which G. E. Moore thought ‘absurd’ present us with two distinct threats to doxastic rationality, not just one. Consider the propositional form

I’m very grateful to Robert Audi, Rich Feldman, Nicholas Griffin, Ernie Sosa, and John Williams for their generous and insightful comments. I also thank the editors of this volume, Mitch Green and John Williams, for prodding me into taking another look at Moore’s paradox. ¹ See Chapter 1, ‘Introduction’, in this volume.

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(i) p, but I don’t believe that p. He noticed that, if you believe an instance of (i), then, on the benign assumption that belief distributes over conjunctions (i.e., that, if you believe that p&q, then you believe that p and you also believe that q), you acquire a false belief. Your type (i) belief cannot be true, because it will necessarily be accompanied by the belief that p, the belief whose object is the left-hand side of your conjunctive type (i) proposition, which, in turn, falsifies the right-hand side of the conjunction, thus rendering your instance of (i) false. So, the proposition expressed by an instance of (i) can only be the object of a false belief. Now, as Williams notes, a belief the object of which is an instance of (ii) p, but I believe that not-p will ensure that you hold a false belief in an entirely different way. In this case, belief distribution assures us that you believe that p, and the truth of your type (ii) belief assures us that you believe that not-p (since the right-hand side of the conjunction will have to be true). Thus, when you believe an instance of (ii), either your conjunctive belief is turned false by the falsity of the conjunct on its right-hand side or it is true and you are inconsistent (for believing both p and not-p). (Of course, you may still be inconsistent when it’s false—if what makes it false is the falsity of its left-hand side; but this is theoretically irrelevant.) So, whenever you believe a true instance of (ii), you are inconsistent. This is a potentially important difference for the explanation of Moorean Absurdity: Self-refutation—in the case of (i)—and inconsistency—in the case of (ii)—may involve significantly different failures of doxastic rationality, and it does seem that any account of the problem which ignores such specificity must be doomed. But Williams hasn’t just claimed that any acceptable analysis of Moorean Absurdity must be sensitive to that seemingly important difference between (i) and (ii). He has gone as far as to suggest that the mere recognition of the phenomena exemplified by (i) and (ii) will yield a fully satisfactory resolution of Moore’s paradox—i.e., a satisfactory explanation of Moorean Absurdity—if we only do so much as to associate the above arguments about (i) and (ii) to the following claim (which is very clearly implied by what he writes but not his verbatim): (W) You rationally believe that p only if there is no simple and compelling argument that we can reasonably expect you to be aware of to the effect that your believing that p is either self-falsifying or ensures the presence of contradictory beliefs in your doxastic system.² ² (W) is implied by the characterization of Williams’s proposal, ibid. I thank Williams for showing me that I unfairly claimed, in my (2001), that he was committed to the view that a Moore-absurd belief ensures the inclusion of a false belief in the believer’s doxastic system in his (1994), even if the misrepresentation was indeed induced by an incautious passage of his (1994). In his (1996), however, Williams clearly identifies the belief giving rise to the Preface paradox as one

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According to Williams’s original proposal (1994), ‘a Moorean believer is irrational either because his belief cannot be correct [as in (i)], or because its correctness entails contradictory beliefs [as in (ii)]’. I then (in my 2001) took him to task for apparently assuming that self-refutation of which the believer is not aware would suffice to account for the irrationality of a type (i) belief. And he now (in Chapter 1 this volume) sees fit to make the following important addition to his account of the irrationality of both a type (i) and a type (ii) belief: ‘Moreover, I should be able to see this fact [i.e., self-refutation if I have a type (i) belief, or inconsistency if my type (ii) belief is true] with a minimum of reflection.’ Beware of misinterpreting ‘should be able’ here. Surely, the mere ability of the believer to present himself with his anti-(i) and anti-(ii) arguments is not what Williams’s revised account requires: The original proposal was obviously not aimed at explaining the irrationality of Moore-absurd beliefs only when these are held by those whose intellectual resources make them incapable of constructing the relevant arguments. It obviously was intended as an explanation of the irrationality of every Moore-absurd belief, including that which is held by the believer who is very capable of putting those arguments to himself in soliloquy. (Otherwise, if Williams, himself, were to hold a Moore-absurd belief and not notice it, he would not, by his own account, be irrational in so doing!) So, the revised proposal must require that those anti-(i) and anti-(ii) arguments actually be evident (on ‘minimal reflection’, whatever that means) to the rational believer. Whence (W)—in which the simplicity requirement does duty for the new minimal-reflection desideratum. I think it should be granted that an explanation of Moorean Absurdity based on both (W) and those anti-(i) and anti-(ii) arguments does have its charms: Self-refutation and inconsistency are obviously anathema to the epistemic goal of believing truths exclusively—the goal to which doxastic rationality is, by most accounts, the (admittedly fallible) means. And we shouldn’t in any way belittle that crucial step forward in the revised account: If I assert—as an honest expression of belief—‘I never use a preposition to end a sentence with,’³ I may be stupid, all right—or an airhead. But irrational (for holding an irrational belief)? Consider (perhaps more to the point) a belief of ‘I never have any introspective beliefs’—which is self-falsifying when resulting from introspection (rather than, say, from the expert testimony of your psychoanalyst). Again, is the charge of irrationality warranted? It’s hard to see that it is, even if we are unable to tell, in every case, whether a particular instance of stupidity is a clear-cut case of that may be rationally believed. My (W) partly results from his complaint. A critical remark from Robert Audi has also contributed to my formulation of (W). ³ This is my version of an example from Raymond Smullyan (1983: 20). Smullyan’s own version is ‘A preposition must never be used to end a sentence with’, which is not really ‘self-annihilating’, as he calls it, if ‘self-annihilation’ somehow implies irrationality, since conscious wrong-doing is not necessarily irrational. At best, his example is a case of ‘do as I say, not as I do’, which does not necessarily involve doxastic irrationality. At worst, the speaker does not have the concept of a preposition, and so doesn’t even understand what he himself asserts, which is philosophically uninteresting.

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irrationality. Now, if I were to see that I refute myself but were still somehow unable to drop the offending belief, I would unquestionably exemplify what we call ‘irrationally held belief ’. So, (W) is definitely a step forward for Williams. There are, however, what I consider good enough reasons to reject his proposed explanation of Moorean Absurdity. First, it is unrealistic to assume that those anti-(i or ii) arguments are anywhere close to being simple enough for even the most demanding, but still fairly plausible, internalistic requirements for doxastic rationality. Notice that, according to (W), the believer is not just required to repudiate a Moore-absurd proposition on instinct (out of epistemic virtue, one might say); he would have to put together an argument to the effect that he ought not to hold a Moore-absurd belief—an argument that will have to include premises about belief distribution and truth-conditions (no matter how ordinary, how non-philosophical the requisite concepts might be allowed to be)! It should, again, be uncontroversial that your availing yourself of those anti-(i or ii) arguments is a sufficient condition of your being irrational, if you, at the same time, persist in holding a Moore-absurd belief. But it should be clear that that cannot be a necessary condition of doxastic rationality, as required by (W).⁴ Second, Williams’s explanation is clearly not complete. Granted, I am not in a position to promise a completeness argument here. Moorean Absurdity has defied both syntactic and semantic criteria. And the epistemological analysis put forward in Section 3 below will not include a completeness argument. Still, it is, by now, unacceptable for us to rest content with confining our attention to the historical forms of Moorean Absurdity, (i) and (ii). Consider (iii) p, but it’s not rational for me to believe that p and (iv) p, but it’s rational for me to believe that not-p. Notice that both (iii) and (iv) intuitively seem to be no less cases of Moorean Absurdity than (i) or (ii). By any standards, if you believe any instance of either (iii) or (iv), you very plainly seem to be doing what, by your own lights, you shouldn’t be doing.⁵ But this is not just any old conscious wrong-doing: Given that what a person believes to be rationally incredible is normally not believed by

⁴ I’ve seen a number of very intelligent people react to the well-known Moore-absurd propositions with a shrug of their shoulders. Catherine Elgin publicly stated, at the 2003 edition of the Rutgers Epistemology Conference, that she doesn’t see what all the fuss concerning Moore’s paradox is about. And I bet it is safe to infer that she hasn’t put those anti-(i or ii) arguments to herself, even though it’s quite obvious that she is capable of doing so. And anyone who does so should have no difficulty feeling the sting of the paradox. That’s Williams’s permanent stamp on the problem. ⁵ In saying that you’re ‘doing’ something by holding a belief, I’m definitely not committed to any controversial views of ‘doxastic agency’. I might as well have said that something untoward is happening to you.

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her, we get the feeling that both a type (iii) and a type (iv) belief are cases of significant cognitive disorder. Now, notice how non-conjunctively embedded occurrences of both (iii) and (iv) (for instance, ‘If it rained yesterday but it’s not rational for me to believe that it did, I’m being misled by that generally reliable weather forecast’), or how their instances with a past-tense (or future-tense) main verb in the second conjunct (‘It rained yesterday, but it was not rational for me to believe that it did, because I had reliable indication to the contrary’), manage to sidestep any sense of absurdity just like (i) and (ii) do when subjected to the embedding/past-tense test (or ‘EP test’, for short). But the (W) combo is powerless to account for these seemingly obvious cases of Moorean Absurdity: Neither a type (iii) nor a type (iv) belief will ensure the presence of a falsehood in your belief system (by either self-refutation or possession of contradictory beliefs). If our EP test is a sure-fire indication of Moorean Absurdity, we can safely go further in pursuit of completeness. Notice how the stultifying (v) I have no beliefs and (vi) I don’t exist, two very clear cases of self-refutation (and thus well within the scope of Williams’s diagnosis), come out Moore-absurd by our seemingly infallible test: While it is obvious that there would be something very wrong with believing either (v) or (vi), nothing seems prima facie problematic with any of the following: ‘If I have no beliefs, I’m either a vegetable or a radical skeptic, according to our philosophy teacher’, ‘I had no beliefs while they meddled with my brain at the neuroscience lab’, ‘If I don’t exist, you can’t expect me to help you, dear’, ‘I didn’t exist when WWII ended’. Our EP test does seem to be a sure-fire way of unmasking Moorean Absurdity: If a proposition is somehow absurd, odd, paradoxical, our test seems to reveal whether it is Moore-absurd. A liar-type proposition will, by our test, fail to exhibit Moorean Absurdity: Notice, for instance, how odd ‘This sentence was not true yesterday’ is. It may not even be meaningful! Likewise, a sentence about a Russellian class such as ‘The class of all classes which are not members of themselves both was and was not a member of itself in 1901’ is, if anything, now doubly odd!⁶ Whether or not the EP test proves to be the key to a completeness argument regarding Moorean Absurdity, I’m here making only the more limited claim that ⁶ In latest correspondence, Williams lets me know that he thinks ‘p but I irrationally believe that p’ is a counterexample to the EP test, since he sees it as absurd but not Moore-absurd, and yet it clearly passes the EP test. We disagree about this: I think it is Moore-absurd. But a discussion of our disagreement in this regard—and of why the Moorean Absurdity of that proposition can be explained along the lines of the analysis put forward in Section 3 below—would far exceed the available space here.

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it is not open to Williams to deny that (iii) and (iv) are clear cases of Moorean Absurdity. Thus, the upshot of the foregoing is that we have more than one good reason to think that Williams has not given us a satisfactory explanation of the phenomenon.⁷

T H E WAY S O F I N C O H E R E N C E The key to understanding the nature of Moorean Absurdity is incoherence, I will be arguing. And I intend to exploit the fact that we seem to have a very robust intuitive grasp of the kind of cognitive malfunction epistemologists call ‘incoherence’ in what follows, with technicalities kept to a bare minimum. Thus, consider this scenario: Suppose you believe that (p) the butler is the murderer. And suppose your belief that p is based (both causally and evidentially) on your beliefs according to which (q) the best criminal science shows that, in 98.7 per cent of the murder cases in which the butler has both motivation and opportunity, he is the murderer, and (r), in the case at hand, the butler did have the motivation and the opportunity to do the deed. But further assume that you also believe that (s) there is an eyewitness who places the butler several hundred miles away from the scene of the crime on that fateful night. If p, q, r, and s are all of your crime-related beliefs, epistemologists will want to say that you are incoherent for harboring beliefs which are counterevidence for one another, namely p and s.⁸ We intuitively censure you—or pity you—for failing to notice that you are not entitled to believe both that p and that s. And we may want to make the point by saying that you do not rationally believe that p if you, at the same time, also believe that s (and vice versa). So, incoherence is what results from the inclusion of effective counterevidence for a given proposition in your belief system. In our test case, s is effective counterevidence for believing that p just because, by hypothesis, there is nothing in your belief system that neutralizes the overriding effect of s (with a view to believing that p rationally).⁹ We should then say that, while holding one of those beliefs, the other is incoherent with your belief system. (Clearly, if, in addition to believing p, q, r, and s, you were also to hold the belief that t, say, that the eyewitness is married to the butler, incoherence would, again, be eliminated, because s would cease to be effective as counterevidence for believing that p.) ⁷ And I still hold, as I did in my (2001), that Williams’s is the analysis to beat when it comes to explaining Moorean Absurdity. ⁸ Important discussions of the concept of coherence can be found in Laurence BonJour (1985) and Keith Lehrer (2000). I discuss the concept in my (2003). Unless you’re a coherentist, you’ll probably agree that incoherence is not the complement of coherence. A belief can be neither coherent nor incoherent with a given belief system. See Robert Audi (2003: ch. 7). ⁹ Like Peter Klein in his (1981), I wouldn’t require that only justified (or ‘rationally held’) beliefs be allowed to have an effective overriding role.

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For our purposes here, it doesn’t really matter how one may want to account for what makes a proposition counterevidence for some other proposition for a given agent. Such an account may require a full-fledged explanation of what makes a proposition good evidence for having another proposition as the content of a belief (for a given agent), and we certainly don’t need any such detailed explanation to understand what makes it irrational for you to hold the conflicting beliefs in our butler case. For our purposes, I will just note that it seems entirely satisfactory, on purely intuitive grounds, to say that what accounts for the way we react to the butler case is that we take this world of ours to be such that, when p is true, s tends to be false, and vice versa. We may want to say that p probabilifies not-s and that s probabilifies not-p. And that is just about all we need in order to account for the way we intuitively react to the butler case—except, perhaps, that we may think it important to add that the irrational believer shares in our belief that p probabilifies not-s and that s probabilifies not-p. (It should suffice for him to be disposed to hold a belief the content of which is logically equivalent to our way of putting it, thus relieving us of any de dicto commitments here.) It seems natural to think that it is epistemic probability that matters to our understanding of incoherence. (Surely, if the would-be irrational believer were at least disposed to believe that the existence of an eyewitness for the defense had no bearing whatsoever on whether the butler did the deed, a judgment of irrationality would seem ill-advised: Strange as it would seem to us, the belief system in question would not, however, display the kind of disarray that characterizes incoherence as we intuitively think of it. It may be plagued by ignorance or some other form of intellectual disorder, but no conflict among beliefs of the kind we call ‘incoherence’.) But we certainly need go no farther in accounting for our intuitive grasp of incoherence. The butler case is a paradigmatic case of incoherence, and the way we intuitively react to it makes it clear that, for us, the belief that p is rationally held by an agent S at a given moment t only if p is not incoherent with S’s belief system at t—a claim that is honored by every epistemology with a fighting chance.¹⁰ But incoherence has at least two other philosophically important manifestations—or so I will maintain here. It is, of course, platitudinous to hold that, if you believe a self-contradictory proposition, you are incoherent, since you are inconsistent, and it is customarily thought that inconsistency implies incoherence. But it gets surprisingly difficult to find a satisfactory explanation of why you are supposed to be incoherent ¹⁰ See Michael Bergmann (1997). I trust that, when fully analyzed, what he simply calls a ‘nodefeater condition’ would be seen to be a fairly complex anti-incoherence conceptual mechanism a partial analysis of which is given by claims (a), (c), and (e) in Section 3 below. On the need for a ‘nodefeater condition’ and on how it affects our understanding of the internalism/externalism debate, also see Thomas Senor (1996). As a general label, Alvin Goldman’s (1998) ‘non-undermining condition’ is a better terminological choice. A full-fledged defeasibility theory such as Klein’s (1981) shows that we need a distinction between ‘defeaters’ and ‘overriders’ (or, at any rate, some more terminology for an important conceptual distinction), rather than just the generic term ‘defeater’.

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whenever you are inconsistent. After all, what is inconsistency? At a minimum, a set of propositions is inconsistent if it is logically impossible for every member of the set to be true. But it is patently clear that you may rationally believe certain necessary falsehoods. Suppose that very reliable logician claims to have derived p from certain set-theoretic axioms. But, uncharacteristically, he made a mistake, and p is actually a non-obvious necessary falsehood. If you take his word for it and believe that p, we should all agree that you may rationally do so. Thus, we have to make finer distinctions when considering the notion of inconsistency and the way it relates to incoherence. It is just not reasonable to hold that every case of inconsistency is a case of incoherence—for not every case of inconsistency is a case of irrationality, and yet, as universally granted, every case of incoherence must be a case of irrationality. The need for a distinction between weak and strong forms of inconsistency has been felt elsewhere in the epistemological literature.¹¹ And I, too, will avail myself of such a useful distinction here. However, for reasons that I don’t have the space to discuss in this paper, I had better steer clear of the distinction as put forward elsewhere and draw it anew for our purposes.¹² A non-ad hoc distinction of strong and weak inconsistency naturally arises, I submit, from attending to the intuitive appeal of a crucial difference: We should notice how much worse off you are, from an epistemic point of view, when you have a self-contradictory belief, i.e., when you believe a truth-functional falsehood, as opposed to believing necessary falsehoods of other kinds. As claimed above, there are countless occasions on which you seem to be perfectly rational in believing certain necessary falsehoods. On all those occasions, not only do you not seem to be plagued by the kind of ‘conflict’ among your beliefs that is essential to incoherence, the only apparent damage to your epistemic health is that you hold a false belief. That’s a very bad thing, all right. But it is no worse than your everyday failure to connect with the empirical world by holding a thoroughly accurate representation of that slice of it that you hope to have hooked up with (if you have indeed so failed). On the other hand, if you believe a contradiction, even (non-ad hoc) relevance restrictions on logical implication can’t possibly keep you from holding a belief that gives you an objectively good, entailing ground for disbelieving that very same contradiction that you believe (as we shall shortly see). Which is why I think we should all agree that one may rationally believe necessary falsehoods only if those rationally believed necessary falsehoods do not include truth-functional falsehoods.¹³ Call this italicized claim the ‘No-RAtionalBelief-I n-Explicit-Self-contradictions’ claim—or ‘No-RABIES’, for short. And the believer who, by means of Reprehensible Acquisition of Beliefs I nstantiating ¹¹ See Klein (1985) and Roy Sorensen (1988). A motivation for the distinction is already recognized in Richard Foley (1979). ¹² I discuss the distinction as put forward in Klein (1985) in a forthcoming version of my (2003). ¹³ 13 If there is a good argument in the epistemological literature to the effect that one may never rationally believe a non-truth-functional necessary falsehood, I have failed to find it.

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Dysfunction as characterized by No-RABIES, believes contradictions should properly be called ‘the RABID believer’. So, you’re RABID if and only if you believe a truth-functional falsehood. There are two routes we can follow in order to be entitled to No-RABIES—that is to say, two routes to concluding that a self-contradictory belief, unlike other types of necessary falsehood, promotes the kind of disarray in your doxastic system intuitively associated with the term ‘incoherence’: First, having accepted that belief distributes over conjunctions, we should notice that every truth-functional falsehood is logically equivalent to—and so logically implies—a proposition of the form p&∼p. And every belief of such a form is accompanied by contradictory beliefs. Now, assume that, if you are rational in believing a given truth-functional falsehood and rationality is closed under logical implication, then you’re rational in believing that p&∼p—which you can’t be, since that would saddle you with both the belief that p and the belief that not-p and would make you obviously ‘incoherent’. From this point on, if you stick with the closure principle, Modus Tollens, De Morgan, Double Negation, and Disjunctive Syllogism give us one way of being assured that you’re irrational in believing a proposition which is logically equivalent to p&∼p.¹⁴ Second, a contradiction logically implies its own negation. Thus, if, again, you stick with the closure principle, and if you can’t rationally believe both p and not-p, because that offends against your most deeply held intuitions about what it is to be ‘incoherent’, you’ll find yourself led back to the conclusion that you can’t rationally believe a contradiction. Now, what would it take for you to be in a position to reasonably deny that a contradiction implies its own negation, or that every truth-functional falsehood logically implies a proposition of the form p&∼p? Certainly, some reasonably held objection that would block the inferential pathways leading to those conclusions. And that means that, unless you are armed with the kind of objection that, say, relevant logicians or anti-realists would try to use to block those inferential pathways (in which case you know that you have your work cut out for you), you will lack the motivation to complain about the inference rules underpinning those pathways, you will be, that is, like the vast majority of the folk. And the vast majority of the folk would surely follow us as we derived that conclusion about the irrationality of RABID believing.¹⁵ By contrast, no such problem—no such commitment to both p and notp—can reasonably be derived from a belief in a non-truth-functional necessary falsehood. Granted, the classical theory of validity will have us believe that any ¹⁴ That is, take the following as your premises: ‘If I’m rational in believing that p [where ‘‘p’’ stands for any truth-functional falsehood] and p implies p&∼p, then I’m rational in believing that p&∼p’, ‘p does imply p&∼p’, and ‘I’m not rational in believing that p&∼p’. Now, apply those rules to derive ‘I’m not rational in believing that p’. ¹⁵ There is, of course, the heroic alternative of rejecting every known version of the closure principle for doxastic rationality (or ‘epistemic justification’). See the discussion of claim (b) in Section 3, below.

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necessary falsehood logically implies anything whatever, and may thus seem to offer a basis for attacking No-RABIES. But that bizarre consequence is a well-known problem for the classical theory, not for us: It is notoriously absurd to hold that, for instance, 2+2=5 logically implies that Mars is a planet just because it is impossible for the former to be true and logical implication ensures that it is impossible for the implied proposition to be false if the implying proposition is true. (And, of course, the absurdity does not hinge on the classical disregard for relevance, as it is equally absurd to hold that 2+2=5 implies that 2+2 does not, after all, equal 5 just because it is impossible for the former to be true, or just because it is impossible for the latter to be false—take your pick!—and logical implication ensures . . .)¹⁶ So, invoking the classical theory of validity (or of logical implication) is a bad move here: Holding on to a notoriously oversimplified explanation of why certain rules of inference appeal to us (or should appeal to us, if we prize what is undeniably good about validity as classically understood, namely, truth-preservation) would hardly give you a good reason for attacking a distinction that is based on the very simple fact that, for the vast majority of us, there are apparently unimpeachable arguments leading from a contradiction to its negation, just as there are equally unimpeachable arguments showing that any truth-functional falsehood is logically equivalent to a proposition of the form p&∼p. And No-RABIES depends only on the very evident fact that no such claim can reasonably be made for non-truth-functional necessary falsehoods—that is, no such claim can be made for non-truth-functional necessary falsehoods without squeezing a funny, notoriously perverse argument out of the classical explanation of what it is for an argument to be valid (or for one proposition to be logically implied by another). If we’re out of the woods with No-RABIES, we have it as a conceptual basis for drawing a useful distinction of weak and strong inconsistency. For we can now define ‘strong inconsistency’ as follows: An agent S is strongly inconsistent at a moment t iff, at t, either there’s a non-empty set of contingent propositions in S’s doxastic system which logically implies the negation of some proposition in the system or S is RABID.¹⁷

¹⁶ For a brief but particularly useful discussion of the problem, see Stephen Read (1995: ch. 2, esp. p. 57–9), and notice that his rejoinder on behalf of the classicist won’t work for non-truthfunctional necessary falsehoods. See also the discussion in David Sanford (1989: ch. 15), where, as I understand it, it is suggested that one may object to the classical explanation of validity without objecting to any classically valid rule (though Sanford himself does object to certain classically valid rules)—because you may not be able to accept certain judgments of invalidity. This is, of course, a huge topic, but I trust we’ve seen enough for our purposes here. ¹⁷ The reader with the Preface on his mind may have noticed that my definition of ‘strong inconsistency’ implies that the prefatory belief makes the believer strongly inconsistent. Indeed, I’m prepared to argue that that’s the case, and that the weak/strong inconsistency is no help in solving that paradox. See my (forthcoming), where a proposed solution of the Preface is put forward.

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Note that, by the above definition, you’ll be strongly inconsistent if your doxastic system contains either contradictories or logical contraries (when an existential assumption is in effect) or truth-functional falsehoods, as expected. And we can now use that definition to define ‘weak inconsistency’ as follows: S is weakly inconsistent at t iff, at t, it is logically impossible for every proposition in S’s doxastic system to be true, but S is not strongly inconsistent. I submit that we can now produce a perfectly general explanation of the kind of ‘conflict’ among beliefs that intuitively characterizes incoherence, one that may be absent when you believe a non-truth-functional necessary falsehood but is clearly present when you believe a contradiction of the form p&∼p, just as it is when you believe contradictories, or when you believe logical contraries, or when you are the obviously irrational believer in our butler case: You are incoherent at t iff, at t, your belief system probabilifies the negation of some proposition in the system, and, if you are inconsistent, you’re strongly inconsistent.¹⁸ We assume, of course, that logical implication is a limiting case of probabilification. Thus, the above definition of ‘incoherence’ seems to cover every intuitively identifiable case of ‘conflict’-irrationality, as we may put it.¹⁹ And it does so from a thoroughly objectivist point of view, a point of view according to which one may be incoherent without knowing, by a combination of introspection and reasoning alone, that one is, a point of view, that is, according to which incoherence need not be transparent to the reflective mind just by introspection and the exercise of reasoning. We have, therefore, reached an explanation of incoherence according to which, when you’re incoherent, either you are like the irrational believer in our butler case or you’re a RABID believer. Now, this is all leading to the claim that the Moore-absurd believer belongs in that very same class of incoherent believers, which would explain why a Moore-absurd believer is irrational. If we’re successful in explaining Moorean Absurdity along those lines, our explanation ¹⁸ It should be noted that, like most people who have written about ‘coherence’ and ‘incoherence’, I take those terms to be defined for propositions (and, derivatively, for beliefs) exclusively. Thus, if your favorite epistemology tells you that some non-propositional element is a justifier of p for you, it would be inappropriate to say that such an element is in some coherence-making relation with p for you. So, for the non-coherentist, it is entirely possible for p to be coherent with your belief system while it is not justified for you—because your justification for believing that p is defeated by some non-propositional element which probabilifies not-p for you. Correspondence with Richard Feldman has shown the need for the clarification. ¹⁹ Well, not quite every intuitively identifiable case; just every case that is relevant for our purposes here. If we were building a complete catalog of intuitive cases of incoherence, we’d have to take into account some cases that do not depend only on what goes on in your belief system at a given moment. Suppose you suspend judgment as to whether p, and suppose that p probabilifies not-q. If, while the withholding is in effect, you believe that q, you clearly are incoherent, even if nothing in your belief system probabilifies not-q.

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will satisfy what has seemed to many a necessary condition for a tenable explanation of the problem: an account of the contradictory-like quality of Moorean Absurdity. (Whether or not you agree that explaining why the Mooreabsurd believer seems to contradict himself in holding a Moore-absurd belief without actually contradicting himself should be a desideratum of a satisfactory account of Moorean Absurdity, it should be obvious that its invulnerability to attacks on that front will be a welcome property of my analysis of the problem.)

MOOREAN ABSURDITY EXPLAINED So, here’s my main claim about Moorean Absurdity: A Moore-absurd belief makes you incoherent. My argument for that claim will require the acceptance of the following six theses (a–f ): (a) If it’s rational for me to believe that p at a moment t, then, at t, it’s not rational for me to hold any belief which is effective (undefeated) counterevidence for the belief that p (in light of all else that I believe). That’s the theoretical claim underlying any minimally plausible explanation of how we intuitively react to the butler case: If both p and q are in your belief system and q probabilifies not-p—however slightly —without having its adverse effect on the epistemic status of your belief that p itself defeated by any other belief in your doxastic system, there should be no doubt that you are irrational (since you are incoherent). It is crucial to note that even a very slight probabilification of not-p by your belief system would make you incoherent in believing that p. (Again, it may be entirely rational for you to believe that p even if your belief system includes counterevidence for believing that p, but only if it is rational for you to believe that the preponderance of the evidence tips the scale in favor of believing that p, in which case that particular piece of counterevidence will have been rendered ineffective.) There should be no doubt that we have the relevant intuitions on our side in this regard. Thus, suppose you are the detective who’s mounted what looks like an ‘air-tight’, but probabilistic, case against the butler. (You may want to add that you have evidence of your reliability, independent confirmation from sources that you take to be reliable, etc.) Now, consider what you should do when you receive an anonymous letter according to which, if you call a certain number, the stranger taking the call just may decide to give you an intriguing piece of evidence which just may lead to the exoneration of the butler. By any standards, you have now acquired very little evidence that the butler is innocent after all. And yet, shouldn’t you make that call? Would it still be rational for you to keep the belief that the butler is the murderer before making the call (if you have those beliefs about the possible outcome of the call)? Intuition clearly seems

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to call for the silencing of the ‘objection’ (as Keith Lehrer would call it²⁰) posed by that letter. No matter what the moral implications of your actions would be, you just wouldn’t seem to be an epistemically virtuous agent (whatever exactly that may mean) if you simply ignored that anonymous letter. The rationality of your believing that the butler did it would clearly be at stake. Probabilification and rationality come in degrees; incoherence (‘conflict’-irrationality) doesn’t: Just any degree of (undefeated) probabilification of not-p will make it irrational for you to believe that p. It doesn’t take much at all to poison the epistemic well.²¹ (b) If it’s rational for me to believe that p, and p logically implies q, then it is rational for me to believe that q. Even though a version of (b)—a version of the well-known ‘closure principle’—was received as news when Edmund Gettier’s seminal paper was published, something like (b) has been tacitly assumed ever since the concept of logical implication seemed important, at the dawn of logic. The above version of the principle (with ‘justification’ replacing ‘rationality’) is competently defended against influential criticism in Peter Klein (1995 and 2002).²² (c) It’s rational for me to believe that p only if I don’t either believe that it’s irrational for me to believe that p or believe that it’s rational for me to believe that not-p. Something like (c) has been defended by some of our most influential epistemologists, an assortment of internalists and externalists: All of Keith Lehrer (2000), Richard Foley (1993, 2001), and Ernest Sosa have been explicit about the need to purge one’s mental life of elements that may be used in an exercise of self-criticism about the epistemic status of one’s beliefs. (Sosa calls it the need for ‘broad coherence’ in his 1997.)²³ It is noteworthy that, if rationality distributes over conjunctions, an obvious consequence of (b), one may not consistently both hold that (iii) and (iv) are Moore-absurd and deny (c), or suspend judgment about it—for, if you believe ²⁰ See his (2000: ch. 6). ²¹ In saying that incoherence is not a gradable state, I make a fairly unusual claim—but not an entirely polemical one. Having noted that coherence comes in degrees, Feldman (2003: 64), for instance, typically says that, if you include both p and not-p in your belief system, you make the system ‘less coherent’. And he goes on to add that ‘inconsistency detracts from coherence’. I would have said that inconsistency precludes it altogether, even if it is a fact that, from an epistemic point of view, having, say, two pairs of contradictories in your belief system is worse than having just one, and having three pairs is worse than having two, and so on. But the discrepancy seems largely verbal to me. The important point, which is highlighted by my way of speaking about the matter, is that any degree of incoherence is an epistemic disadvantage, and, while no tenable epistemology would require entailing evidence—or perfect reliability—every tenable epistemology (every tenable normative epistemology, that is) must condemn incoherence, no matter how minimal. ²² But see my exchange with Jonathan Kvanvig under his post ‘Klein on Useful Falsehoods’ (filed under ‘knowledge’) at the web forum Certain Doubts (http://fleetwood.baylor.edu/certain doubts/ index.php?p=161) for criticism of Klein’s restrictions on the closure principle. ²³ I argue for the recognition of the epistemic importance of immunity to self-criticism along the lines of (c) in my (2000).

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that it may be rational for you to believe that p even when you believe that it’s irrational for you to do so, or when you believe that it’s rational for you to believe that not-p, you clearly would have no motivation to regard (iii) and (iv) as Mooreabsurd. This is not, however, my explanation of why (iii) and (iv) are Mooreabsurd. You may reasonably accept both (b) and (c) but fail to see that (iii) or (iv) is ‘absurd’. But I work here on the assumption that a good enough explanation of Moorean Absurdity will show you that each of (i)–(vi) is Moore-absurd (i.e., essentially, it is such that, despite being contingent, it can never be rationally believed) and does not, therefore, depend on the prior perception that each of those is somehow ‘absurd’ (widespread and expected as that prior perception may be). So, I still owe you an explanation of the Moorean Absurdity of (iii) and (iv). (d) If I believe that p at t, then, at t, it is (prima facie) rational for me to believe that I believe that p. I wouldn’t dare pretend that (d) is irresistible. It has been vigorously resisted by the enemies of foundationalism, as we know.²⁴ (d) is a foundationalist claim, but it is not all there is to a foundationalist theory of doxastic rationality, of course. It may be embraced by both internalist and externalist varieties of foundationalism, and by the gamut of competing factions in each camp. It is, therefore, a mainstay of contemporary epistemology.²⁵ (e) If I believe that I believe that p at t, then it’s not rational for me to believe that not-p at t (and, if I believe that I believe that not-p at t, then it’s not rational for me to believe that p at t). I don’t expect (e) to be self-evident. So, here’s my argument for it: (e1) If the conditional (e) is false, then you do believe that you believe that p and it may be both rational for you to retain the belief that you believe that p and also (simultaneously) rational for you to add the belief that not-p in your belief system. (e2) If the second conjunct of the consequent of (e1) is true, you may rationally believe that p is in your belief system while rationally adding not-p to the system. (e3) Our most basic assumption about rationality here is that you can’t rationally believe that p if p is incoherent with your belief system—that is, if your ²⁴ I’m afraid I don’t quite understand what Ernest Sosa (2003: 111, 116) calls ‘propositionallycontentful experiences’, something that, supposedly, a coherentist might be able to appeal to in order to assimilate a foundationalist element into his epistemology. In any case, it is suggested by Sosa that some such form of a hybrid coherentism (or a coherentist foundationalism) is not inconceivable. Pending clarification of Sosa’s suggestion, I take (d) to be a hopelessly foundationalist claim in the exclusive, anti-coherentist sense of ‘foundationalist’. For helpful discussion, see Byrne (2005). ²⁵ In correspondence, an influential contemporary foundationalist, Audi, suggests that (d) would naturally be embraced by foundationalists. But he also believes that a form of foundationalism that is not committed to (d) is conceivable.

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(e4)

(e5) (e6)

(e7)

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belief system contains effective evidence for not-p (i.e., anything which probabilifies not-p, however slightly, without that evidential support being overridden).²⁶ And q can be evidence for p only if the presumed truth of q probabilifies p (on any conception of probability). In view of (e3), if the consequent of (e2) is true, you may truly believe that p is in your belief system while rationally adding not-p to the system (i.e., the truth of what you already believe, ‘I believe that p’, does not probabilify the negation of what you add to the system, not-p). If the consequent of (e4) is true, you may rationally add not-p to your system while p is in the system. But the consequent of (e5) is clearly false, since, if it were true, you’d rationally believe that not-p while becoming strongly inconsistent in so believing, which we have assumed is impossible. So, by successive applications of Modus Tollens, we see that the antecedent of (e1) is false.

If you agree that strong inconsistency is incompatible with rational believing, (e) should now seem entirely unproblematic to you. Any tenable theory of doxastic rationality must imply (e).²⁷ (f ) If I believe that p&q, then I believe that p and I believe that q. The unproblematic (f) completes our set of premises. We now need no more than classical propositional logic to see that, even though a Moore-absurd proposition is contingent, Moore-absurd believing is like RABID believing in that it is a non-obvious case of conflict-irrationality, the kind of irrationality we should identify with incoherence. In what follows, ‘Bp’ abbreviates ‘I believe that p’, and ‘Rp’ abbreviates ‘It is (prima facie) rational for me to believe that p’. Thus, ‘RBp’ should be read as ‘It is (prima facie) rational for me to believe that I believe that p’ and ‘Bp&Rp’ will stand for ‘I (prima facie) rationally believe that p’.²⁸ Given that a belief is ultima facie rational if and only if it is prima facie rational and there is no effective counterevidence for it in the agent’s mental life, the following arguments show that Moore-absurd believing is a case of irrationality without qualification. ²⁶ Here, we disregard the question of whether the beliefs you already have are justified and ask ourselves what constraints the rational acquisition of new beliefs is under once you believe what you already do (perhaps unjustifiedly). We want to know what kind of problem incoherence is, how, just by itself, it makes rational believing impossible. ²⁷ Persistent pounding at (e) by Rich Feldman made me see that the argument I had for (e) in a draft of this paper was unacceptably compressed. Similar objections were made by John Williams and Robert Audi. ²⁸ ‘I rationally believe that p’ is just idiomatic for ‘I believe that p and it is rational for me to do so’. The usual distinction between ‘propositional justification’ (or ‘rationality’, or ‘warrant’, or ‘entitlement’) and ‘doxastic justification’ is not pertinent here, since we’re exclusively concerned with whether you can be ‘propositionally justified’ in having a Moore-absurd belief. For the doxastic/propositional distinction, see Roderick Firth (1978).


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On the Moorean-Absurdity of (i): 1. B(i) ⊃ Bp 2. Bp ⊃ RBp 3. R(i) ⊃ R ∼ Bp 4. R ∼ Bp ⊃ ∼ RBp 5. B(i)&R(i) 6. B(i) 7. R(i) 8. B(i) ⊃ RBp 9. R(i) ⊃ ∼ RBp 10. RBp 11. ∼RBp 12. ∼(B(i)&R(i) )

Assumption from (f ) Assumption from (d) Assumption from (b) Assumption from (a) Assumption for Reductio Ad Absurdum 5 by Simplification 5 by Sim. 1, 2 by Hypothetical Syllogism 3, 4 by HS 6, 8 by Modus Ponens 7, 9 by MP 5–11 by RAA

On (ii):

1. B(ii) ⊃ BB ∼ p 2. BB ∼ p ⊃ ∼ Rp 3. R(ii) ⊃ Rp 4. B(ii)&R(ii) 5. B(ii) ⊃ ∼ Rp 6. B(ii) 7. ∼Rp 8. R(ii) 9. Rp 10. ∼(B(ii)&R(ii) )

Assumption from (f ) Assumption from (e) Assumption from (b) Assumption for RAA 1,2 by HS 4 by Sim. 5,6 by MP 4 by Sim. 3, 8 by MP 4–9 by RAA

1. Rp ⊃ ∼ B ∼ Rp 2. B(iii) ⊃ B ∼ Rp 3. R(iii) ⊃ Rp 4. B(iii)&R(iii) 5. B(iii) 6. R(iii) 7. Rp 8. B∼Rp 9. ∼B∼Rp 10. ∼(B(iii)&R(iii) )

Assumption from (c) Assumption from (f ) Assumption from (b) Assumption for RAA 4 by Sim. 4 by Sim. 3,6 by MP 2,5 by MP 1, 7 by MP 4–9 by RAA

1. B(iv) ⊃ BR ∼ p 2. Rp ⊃ ∼ BR ∼ p 3. R(iv) ⊃ Rp 4. B(iv)&R(iv)

Assumption from (f ) Assumption from (c) Assumption from (b) Assumption for RAA

On (iii):

On (iv):

Claudio de Almeida 5. B(iv) 6. R(iv) 7. BR∼p 8. Rp 9. ∼BR∼p 10. ∼(B(iv)&R(iv) )

On (v): 1. B(v) ⊃ RB(v) 2. RB(v) ⊃ R ∼ (v) 3. R ∼ (v) ⊃ ∼ R(v) 4. B(v)&R(v) 5. B(v) ⊃ R ∼ (v) 6. R(v) ⊃∼ R ∼ (v) 7. B(v) 8. R(v) 9. ∼R∼(v) 10. R∼(v) 11. ∼(B(v)&R(v) )

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4 by Sim. 4 by Sim. 1, 5 by MP 3, 6 by MP 2, 8 by MP 4–9 by RAA Assumption from (d) Self-evident²⁹ Assumption from (a) Assumption for RAA 1,2 by HS 3 by Contraposition 4 by Sim. 4 by Sim. 6, 8 by MP 5,7 by MP 4–10 by RAA

On (vi): 1. R(vi) ⊃ R(I have no beliefs [(v)]) Common sense 2. RB(vi) ⊃ R ∼ (v) Self-evident 3. B(vi) ⊃ RB(vi) Assumption from (d) 4. R ∼ (v) ⊃∼ R(v) Assumption from (a) 5. B(vi)&R(vi) Assumption for RAA 6. B(vi) 5 by Sim. 7. B(vi) ⊃ R ∼ (v) 2, 3 by HS 8. R∼(v) 6, 7 by MP 9. R(vi) 5 by Sim. 10. R(v) 1,9 by MP 11. ∼R(v) 4,8 by MP 12. ∼(B(vi)&R(vi) ) 5–11 by RAA³⁰ I take it that we have shown that—the closure principle, belief distribution, and our foundationalist claim aside—from a set of premises whose main epistemic content is the prevention of incoherence, it follows that Moore-absurd believing promotes that kind of irrationality, conflict-irrationality, which we have identified with incoherence, QED. ²⁹ Premise 2 is an instance of this self-evident principle: If it is (prima facie) rational for me to believe that I believe that p, then it’s (prima facie) rational for me to believe that I have at least one belief. ³⁰ This argument is in response to an objection that Williams made against my previous argument for the irrationality of (vi). I’m grateful to him for identifying a pocket of obscurity in that previous argument.

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C O N C LU D I N G R E M A R K S : M O O R E A N A B S U R D I T Y, K N OW L E D G E , A N D J U S T I F I C AT I O N I SM There are at least three interesting (and intimately related) consequences of the foregoing for contemporary epistemology. First, I have given you a foundationalist explanation of Moorean Absurdity. This is, of course, bad news for the traditional rivals of foundationalism, which, to my knowledge, haven’t produced any such explanation. Nor do we seem to have an inkling of what form either a coherentist or an infinitist resolution of Moore’s paradox might take.³¹ Second, unlike my previous offering on this matter (in my 2001), according to which a Moore-absurd belief is one for which there can be no non-overriden evidence, the present explanation is non-evidentialist. It is, therefore, one which is available to any form of foundationalist epistemology that is compatible with our claim (d). Whereas my previous proposal placed a resolution of Moore’s paradox out of reach for all externalists, the present proposal levels the playing field (as far as the paradox is concerned) for both internalist and externalist forms of foundationalism. Evidentialism—particularly, the internalist foundationalism favored by my previous analysis of the matter—loses its foothold here, because our analysis of Moorean Absurdity has given us no basis to disqualify an externalist conception of foundational justification (or ‘rationality’). Third, because we have relied on a premise (our (d)) according to which the occurrence of a lower-level belief state produces epistemic entitlement for a higher-level belief state which describes the occurrence of that lower-level belief state, our explanation of Moorean Absurdity reminds us that non-justificationist epistemologies—those for which doxastic rationality (or ‘epistemic justification’, or ‘epistemic entitlement’), no matter how it is conceived, is not a necessary condition of knowing—have been on a collision course with Moore’s paradox. If you are a non-justificationist, what will you say about Moore-absurd belief ? Since every belief of type (ii) or (iii) or (iv) can be true, can it also be a case of knowledge? If not, why not? It seems clear that, in response to these questions, the non-justificationist will either remain silent or else will try to bite a very fast bullet and hold that there is, after all, no problem in one’s having a Moore-absurd proposition as an object of knowledge. Truth-tracking theories are, of course, in this category of our victims—most prominently, Nozickian and Dretskean epistemologies.³² (I ignore, as I think we should, the possibility that such theories ³¹ In a series of recent papers, Peter Klein has single-handedly turned infinitism into a serious alternative to coherentism, foundationalism, and skepticism. One of the most compelling of those papers is his (1999). ³² See Fred Dretske (1991) and Robert Nozick (1981). For an important discussion of alternative formulations of an interesting truth-tracking principle, see Sosa (1999). According to Fred Adams and Murray Clarke (2005), the truth-tracking theories are alive and well—or, at any rate, making

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might be patched up with justificationist conditions. Their claim to fame resides precisely in their being based on a ‘brutely external causal requirement’ for knowledge, as Sosa (2003) would put it, thus doing away with the need for a justification condition.³³ Brutishness implies clarity. The watering-down of those epistemologies shouldn’t be a starting point. But I am here suggesting that it is their inevitable fate when Moore’s paradox is factored into the discussion.) In his Moore-absurd predicament, the truth-tracking epistemologist is joined by all those who have endorsed some form of non-justificationism as a viable account of propositional knowledge. These include what we might want to call ‘apartheid epistemologists’: a growing number of philosophers for whom the theory of doxastic rationality had better be kept apart from the theory of knowledge, which, for them, may be based exclusively on truth-tracking considerations. Richard Foley (2001, 1998) has been an eloquent spokesperson for apartheid in epistemology. Sosa’s (1991: ch. 13) distinction of truth-tracking ‘animal knowledge’ and rationality-based ‘reflective knowledge’ may assign him to the apartheid group. (Can a Moore-absurd belief be a case of animal knowledge? If not, why not?) The William Alston for whom epistemic justification is an important notion but epistemological justificationism is a form of ‘professional parochialism’ (Alston 1988: 181) should be regarded as a charter member of the apartheid club; as apparently also should the Laurence BonJour for whom ‘perhaps externalism and internalism are best regarded as complementary approaches to largely different issues, rather than as competitors’ (BonJour 2003: 36). Though increasingly popular—because it promises fast conciliation between warring factions—segregationism is a deeply tortured view. For hasn’t the concern with having good evidence—particularly, the concern with having good reasons —for believing always been the very same as the concern with being ‘non-accidentally in touch with the truth’ (as Sosa puts it)? So, how can we make sense of the view according to which an account of how one succeeds at being non-accidentally in touch with the truth (like Sosa’s virtue epistemology) is ‘simply irrelevant’ to a discussion of ‘the main internalist account of justification’ (BonJour 2003: 189)? Segregationism has major problems of its own even before colliding with Moorean Absurdity. Our new problem for apartheid epistemologists is very much the same as our challenge for non-justificationists in general. The paradox puts them in the very uncomfortable position of owing us two different explanations: one for why a Moore-absurd belief is irrational and the other for why a Moore-absurd belief can’t be knowledge. And the latter had better not be based on the former! In light of such somber prospects, it is easy to see how the non-justificationist may be reminded of that time-honored strategy in philosophy: Try shrugging a comeback into the mainstream. See Fred Adams (2005) for his defense of truth-tracking theories against the most popular objections. ³³ In correspondence, Sosa lets me know that his manuscript reads ‘brutely external causal requirement’, not ‘brutally . . .’, as printed in the published version.

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your shoulders and dismissing this rationale for justificationism as arising from that funny bit of philosophical extravagance, Moore’s paradox. But I would urge the non-justificationist to think again. Moorean Absurdity is an ordinary enough manifestation of irrationality. And, if you keep it in mind, you’ll see the Moore-absurd wolf in sheep’s clothing often enough.³⁴ For instance, consider the following scenario: You’re on a tour of that high-tech electronics plant, where your guide is a renowned scientist. You stop in front of what looks like a window, see what looks like the bright blue sky outside, and remark that the weather turned out good after all, in spite of those dark morning clouds. To which the scientist replies: ‘It’s actually raining, but you believe it isn’t, because what you’re looking at is not a window; it’s our prototype of an amazingly realistic plasma screen, and we’ve invited you here to put it to the test!’ If his claim is true and you’re tracking the truth—because your reliable and stable truth-tracking abilities make you responsive to his authority, etc.—you will believe the Moore-absurd ‘It’s actually raining, but I believe it isn’t . . .’ and hold an obviously irrational belief. So, that very mundane contingent proposition can’t both be true and rationally believed by you.³⁵ Now, would anyone really want to maintain that such an obvious case of irrationality is a case of knowledge? Human knowledge it definitely doesn’t seem to be. And I confess to being one of those who find it hard to see that we have any other concept of knowledge —no matter how metaphorical, ambiguous or sloppy we can get in ordinary parlance when the word ‘knows’ is thrown around. (For instance, while it may not seem inappropriate to identify knowledge with true belief when asserting that ³⁴ Sorensen (1988: ch. 1) carries a number of interesting non-obvious cases of Moorean Absurdity. ³⁵ Moore’s paradox poses this wicked problem: If other people can know truths about you that you can’t know yourself, because you can’t rationally believe the propositions that convey those truths, how can they help you? In correspondence, Williams suggests that, in the plasma screen case, we obviously think that the scientist’s assertion will somehow trigger a revision in the hearer’s belief system. And I think he is right: That assertion must be useful somehow. (At a minimum, we should expect the rational hearer to be driven into suspension of judgment about whether what’s in front of him is a window. By hypothesis, the exceptionally realistic screen does give him evidence not to believe the scientist. Whether the preponderance of the evidence favors believing the scientist is irrelevant here.) But it’s hard to explain how one goes about rationally making the expected revision. You can’t just pick and choose those parts of what the scientist asserted that you can rationally believe. He asserted an instance of ‘p but you believe that not-p’. From what he asserted, you can’t infer that p and believe it rationally (thus having it as a candidate for knowledge) unless you first believe ‘p but I believe that not-p’, and do so rationally, which, by hypothesis, you can’t do. My tentative solution: You can rationally believe ‘The scientist has just asserted that (p & I believe that not-p)’. Since assertion distributes over conjunctions, you can now infer that ‘The scientist has just asserted that p’. And from this, you finally infer that p. That way, you can come to believe that p rationally without having ever believed the Moore-absurd conjunction. Maybe this vindicates our perception that you can take that treacherous assertion as the proper stimulus for revising your belief system without being irrational in so doing. But my point remains: I have claimed no more than that you can’t rationally believe the scientist. The scientist can’t help you revise your belief system by being believed by you. There is, however, the alternative route from the scientist’s assertion to your rational belief revision.

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a 3 year old ‘knows’ that such-and-such, common sense will readily reject the identification when one is said to ‘know’ that such-and-such but the person’s true belief obviously results from both cognitive malfunction and luck.) The deepest moral of my story is a justificationist one for epistemology: Some true beliefs can’t be knowledge just because they can’t be rationally held. Surely, this will sound like a truism to some. Interestingly, however, it should come as news to some of our most venerable epistemologists. It is a safe bet that the reason for surprise is that they have tacitly assumed that every belief the content of which is a contingent proposition may be a case of knowledge—provided it is not a self-refuting belief, and provided the would-be knower is not like the typically incoherent believer in our butler case.³⁶ But we’ve seen that those two familiar provisos are not sufficient to root out Moorean Absurdity. In fact, I believe we’ve seen quite a bit more than that: We’ve seen that a ‘non-undermining condition’ which is rich enough to root out every form of incoherence, including Moorean Absurdity, is one that includes our foundationalist premise (d) and so is, for that reason alone, one that non-justificationists cannot afford. One may really have to go all the way and embrace our foundationalist premise (d), thus letting non-justificationism—and, with it, the promise of instant conflict-resolution in epistemology—go. Now, shall we get back to work on our hard-earned conflict? REFERENCES Adams, Fred (2005), ‘Tracking Theories of Knowledge’, in Claudio de Almeida (ed.), Perspectives in Contemporary Epistemology, Veritas, 50/4 (Porto Alegre, Brazil). and Clarke, Murray (2005), ‘Resurrecting the Tracking Theories’, Australasian Journal of Philosophy. Alston, William (1988), ‘Justification and Knowledge’, in his Epistemic Justification: Essays in the Theory of Knowledge (Ithaca: Cornell University Press). Audi, Robert (2003), Epistemology: A Contemporary Introduction to the Theory of Knowledge (2nd edn., New York and London: Routledge). Bergmann, Michael (1997), ‘Internalism, Externalism and the No-Defeater Condition’, Synthese, 110: 399–417. BonJour, Laurence (2003), (co-authored with Ernest Sosa), Epistemic Justification: Internalism vs. Externalism, Foundations vs. Virtues (Oxford: Blackwell). (1985), The Structure of Empirical Knowledge (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press). ³⁶ Still, BonJour’s (2003: 32) question is a disturbing one: ‘Is there any intelligible rationale for the requirement of negative internal justification [the juxtaposition of some ‘‘no-defeater condition’’], which the modified version of externalism accepts, that does not also support the requirement of positive internal justification, which it rejects?’ Can the question, mutatis mutandis, be posed to the internalist who adopts a defeasibility condition to deal with the Gettier problem? Is that also a move that lacks a compelling, independent rationale? I think the defeasibilist internalist will ultimately have the upper hand in this regard, but I don’t have the space to justify my answer here.

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Byrne, Alex (2005), ‘Perception and Conceptual Content’, in M. Steup and E. Sosa (eds.), Contemporary Debates in Epistemology (Oxford: Blackwell). De Almeida, Claudio (forthcoming), ‘Coherence, Defeasibility and the Preface Paradox’, unpublished, presented at the Third International Principia Conference, Florianopolis, Brazil, 10 September 2003. (2001), ‘What Moore’s Paradox is about’, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 62/1 33–58. (2000), ‘Epistemic Deontologism Set Aright’, unpublished, presented at the 2000 meeting of the Central States Philosophical Association, Lincoln, Nebraska. (1999), ‘Moore’s Paradox’, in Robert Audi (ed.), The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy (2nd edn., Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Dretske, Fred (1991), ‘Two Conceptions of Knowledge: Rational Belief vs. Reliable Belief ’, Grazer Philosophische Studien, 40: 15–30. Feldman, Richard (2003), Epistemology (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall). Firth, Roderick (1978), ‘Are Epistemic Concepts Reducible to Ethical Concepts?’, in A. I. Goldman and J. Kim (eds.), Values and Morals (Dordrecht: Reidel). Foley, Richard (2001), Intellectual Trust in Oneself and Others (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). (1998), ‘Justification, Epistemic’, in Edward Craig (ed.), The Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy (New York and London: Routledge). (1993), Working without a Net: A Study of Egocentric Epistemology (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press). (1979), ‘Justified Inconsistent Beliefs’, American Philosophical Quarterly, 16: 247–58. Goldman, Alvin (1998), ‘Reliabilism’, in Edward Craig (ed.), The Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy (New York and London: Routledge). Klein, Peter (2002), ‘Skepticism’, in Paul Moser (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Epistemology (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press), 336–61. (1999), ‘Human Knowledge and the Infinite Regress of Reasons’, in James E. Tomberlin (ed.), Philosophical Perspectives 13, Epistemology, 1999 (Cambridge, Mass. and Oxford: Blackwell), 297–325. (1985), ‘The Virtues of Inconsistency’, Monist, 68: 105–35. (1981), Certainty: A Refutation of Scepticism (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press). Lehrer, Keith (2000), Theory of Knowledge (2nd edn., Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press). Nozick, Robert (1981), Philosophical Explanations (Cambridge, Mass.: The Belknap Press). Read, Stephen (1995), Thinking about Logic: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Logic (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press). Sanford, David (1989), If p, then q: Conditionals and the Foundations of Reasoning (London and New York: Routledge). Senor, Thomas (1996), ‘The Prima/Ultima Facie Justification Distinction in Epistemology’, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 56/3: 551–66. Smullyan, Raymond (1983), 5000 B.C. and Other Philosophical Fantasies (New York: St Martin’s Press). Sorensen, Roy (1988), Blindspots (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press).

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Sosa, Ernest (2003) (co-authored with Laurence BonJour), Epistemic Justification: Internalism vs. Externalism, Foundations vs. Virtues (Oxford: Blackwell). (1999), ‘How to defeat Opposition to Moore’, in James E. Tomberlin (ed.), Philosophical Perspectives 13, Epistemology, 1999 (Cambridge, Mass. and Oxford: Blackwell), 141–53. (1997), ‘Reflective Knowledge in the Best Circles’, Journal of Philosophy, 94: 410–30. (1991), Knowledge in Perspective: Selected Essays in Epistemology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Williams, John N. (1996), ‘Moorean Absurdities and the Nature of Assertion’, Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 74: 135–49. (1994), ‘Moorean Absurdity and the Intentional ‘‘Structure’’ of Assertion’, Analysis, 54: 160–6.

4 The Normative Character of Belief Thomas Baldwin

1 Moore points to the absurdity of saying such things as ‘I don’t believe that it’s raining, though as a matter of fact it is’ and ‘I believe he has gone out, but he has not’ (Moore 1942: 543; 1959: 175; 1993: 207). He goes on to argue that this kind of absurdity is paradoxical because it disappears once these statements are conjugated into the past tense, as in ‘I did not then believe it was raining, though as a matter of fact it was’, or expressed in the third-person as ‘Moore does not believe that it’s raining, though as a matter of fact it is’ (Moore 1993: 208–9). For these transformations can be understood to be ways of expressing the very same proposition as was expressed by the initial statement; and it is, he suggests, paradoxical that for each of us there is a type of statement about ourselves which we cannot make without absurdity even though the proposition thereby expressed, so far from being self-contradictory, may well be true and can be expressed in other ways without absurdity. Moore goes on to suggest that the resolution of this paradox lies in taking account of what one ‘implies’ by making a statement in addition to what one ‘means’ by it (Moore 1993: 210). In saying ‘I don’t believe that it’s raining, though as a matter of fact it is’, I imply by the second clause that I believe that it is raining; and since this implication conflicts with what I mean by the first clause, my statement is absurd: what I imply contradicts what I mean or assert. Furthermore, the fact that the statement’s absurdity is not preserved by transformations of it into the past tense or the third-person is explained by the fact that although these transformations preserve the proposition expressed, they alter the implications inherent in expressing the proposition in one way rather than another. In using the past tense (‘I did not then believe it was raining, I am much indebted to John Williams and to an anonymous referee for comments on earlier versions of this paper.

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though as a matter of fact it was’), I imply only that I now believe that it was then raining, not that I did then believe this; and if I use the third-person to describe Moore’s belief (‘Moore does not believe that it’s raining, though as a matter of fact it is’), I imply that I believe that it is raining, not that Moore believes this. So in neither case does the implication of my saying what I do contradict what I then mean. Where the issue is presented as Moore presented it, as a paradox about the absurdity or not of different ways in which the same thing can be said, his resolution of the paradox must be along the right lines. As was observed by John Williams some years ago (Williams 1979), however, the absurdity inherent in saying ‘I believe he has gone out, but he has not’ needs some further attention. For on Moore’s proposal what is implied by the second clause here is only that I believe that he has not gone out, and this implication does not contradict my statement that I believe that he has gone out. This belief is certainly inconsistent with the belief that I say that I have; but since we can and do have inconsistent beliefs, the ground for the absurdity of the initial statement cannot be that of the other type of case. Nonetheless, because the inconsistency is wholly explicit in this case, the explanation for the absurdity of this second type of Moorean utterance is that the speaker is presenting himself as someone with beliefs which are so overtly inconsistent that no rational person should seriously entertain them together. A different issue arises from Moore’s account of the way in which assertion implies belief. According to Moore this implication rests on an inductive association: it is simply because the association between assertion and belief is so very common that we experience statements in which this implication is contradicted as absurd (Moore 1993: 210). This cannot be right. It entails that when we are dealing with a known habitual liar who frequently says what we know he does not believe we should not find any absurdity in an utterance by him of a Moorean type, such as ‘I don’t believe I returned your book, though as a matter of fact I did’. But the absurdity is just as manifest in this statement as in others, and this fact suggests that the absurdity of a Moorean utterance arises from the fact that it violates some general principles inherent in the practice of assertion. In a previous discussion of this matter I advanced a proposal of this kind, drawing on some of Grice’s suggestions about meaning (Baldwin 1990: 228–9; Grice 1989: 219). My proposal (slightly modified) was that since assertion is a speech act in which one tells one’s audience something with the intention of providing them with a reason for believing it through their recognition that one intends them to believe that one believes it oneself with good reason, this intention excludes deliberately representing oneself, within the very same speech act, as not believing what one asserts, since one would thereby undermine one’s intention of providing them with a reason for believing it through their recognition that one intends them to believe that one believes it oneself. So on this account, the absurdity of a Moorean utterance such as ‘I don’t

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believe that it’s raining, though as a matter of fact it is’ is that someone hearing it cannot make sense of the speaker’s intentions; by disavowing his own belief in that which he is asserting, namely that it is raining, the speaker undermines his own apparent communicative intention and his audience is left with no straightforward way of making sense of the speech act (though of course it can be reinterpreted as an expression of astonishment or something similar). As noted before, the account of the absurdity of the other type of Moorean utterance, ‘I believe that Jones has gone out, but he has not’ has to be slightly different, for here the speaker does not disavow belief concerning the matter which he presents himself as intending to convey to his audience, namely that Jones has not gone out. But since he explicitly affirms the contradictory belief, that Jones has gone out, the speaker still leaves the audience bewildered. He still undermines his apparent intention to give them a reason to believe that Jones has not gone out through their recognition that he believes this for good reason by telling them that he himself has exactly the opposite belief. 2 This account of the absurdity inherent in putative Moorean assertions still seems to me to have some merit. But it relies on assumptions about the intentional structure of assertion that are disputable. On the one hand, there appear to be cases in which a speaker makes an assertion without the intention of thereby providing his audience with a reason for believing what he asserts, as when he is being tested by someone whom he takes to know the answers already; on the other hand, there are cases of conversational implicature in which one does have the appropriate communicative intentions, but does not assert what one deliberately implicates. Furthermore, the account is open to the complaint that it seems misplaced to locate the ground for Moore’s absurdities in the way in which they undermine their own communicative potential, as opposed to finding it within the meaning of the assertions themselves. For both reasons, therefore, it would be preferable if one could locate the ground for these absurdities in a more straightforward account of the relationship between assertion and belief which does not rely on assumptions about the communicative intentions of speakers. I will come back later to a suggestion of this kind. For the moment, however, I turn to a different issue. Just as a Moorean assertion strikes us as absurd, it is similarly absurd to suppose someone having the thought: I don’t believe that it’s raining, though as a matter of fact it is; and since the absurdity here seems to be intrinsic and not dependent on the fact that such a thought could not be communicated to others without incoherence, some further account of this absurdity is needed. In my previous discussion of this issue (Baldwin 1990: 230), I suggested that if one thinks of such a thought as a conscious

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belief, and thus such that the thinker is aware of believing it when he has it, a potential contradiction within the thinker’s mind similar to that implied for the audience of a Moorean assertion can be generated. For, on the one hand, the Moorean thinker is aware of having the belief: I don’t believe that it’s raining; but, on the other hand, in being aware that he also has the belief that it is raining, he believes that he believes that it is raining. By a reflective move this higher-order belief is itself one of which he can become aware; so if he is reflective he will become aware that he believes that he believes that it is raining, and there is no reason why this awareness should veil his prior awareness that he also believes that he does not believe that it is raining. Hence, he will become aware both that he does not believe that it is raining and that he does believe this, which is manifestly incoherent. And, I suggested, it is a sense of this potential incoherence which motivates the impression that the Moorean thought is absurd. A similar argument will yield the conclusion concerning conscious Moorean beliefs of the type ‘I believe that Jones has gone out, but he has not’ that a reflective thinker can become aware of believing both that he believes that Jones has gone out and that he believes that he has not gone out. Because these higher-order beliefs are not contradictory the incoherence here is not as extreme as in the other case; but since the inconsistency is still overt, no rational thinker could be content to be aware of believing that he has both these beliefs. So my suggestion was, again, that it is implicit recognition of this result which explains the sense that the Moorean thought itself would be absurd. This account of the absurdity of Moorean thoughts no longer seems to me to be satisfactory (but for a recent defence of a version of it, see Williams 2006). It depends on a capacity for reflective self-awareness which is questionable and it applies only to the conscious beliefs of a suitably reflective thinker. But the absurdity of Moorean thoughts seems to lie deeper than this—in merely having such a belief rather than in the prospect of being aware that one has such a belief. One way to bring this point out is to compare beliefs with assumptions. Like belief and other propositional attitudes, whatever we assume we assume to be true; in this sense assumption ‘aims at the truth’. Nonetheless, there is no absurdity in my thinking: it is raining, but I will not assume that it is. For it is precisely the point of attitudes such as assumption that we can employ them in order to distance ourselves in thought from what we take to be the truth. Moore’s paradox arises from the fact that belief is not like this: we cannot in the same way distance what we take our beliefs to be from the truth as we see it. This feature of belief seems fundamental to it and needs to be explicated; but in looking for an explication it does not seem sufficient to indicate the potential for incoherence in the beliefs of a reflective Moorean thinker who is aware of his beliefs.

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3 In addressing this issue, I want to start from Jane Heal’s suggestion that there is ‘a sort of performative character’ in declarations that one believes something (Heal 1994: 21). The purpose of this suggestion is to support the claim that sincere first-person declarations of belief are authoritative because there is a ‘constitutive link’ between one’s judgment that one believes something and the belief itself: in such cases ‘the occurrence of a representation of a state of affairs is itself what constitutes that state of affairs’ (Heal 1994: 21). This is the reason, Heal suggests, why first-person belief claims have the special status reflected by Moore’s absurdities. In making her suggestion Heal acknowledges that believing is not just like promising, and in thinking about her position it is important to consider the differences between them. The most significant is that one makes a promise simply by deliberately saying ‘I promise’ or something similar, so that as long as the speech act was intentional, one has thereby promised. In this case, the intentional act of producing a verbal ‘representation’ (‘I promise’) does constitute that which is represented, a promise. But in the case of belief, nothing so straightforward obtains: my solemn and intentional declaration of the Apostles’ Creed (‘I believe . . .’) does not make it the case that I believe these things. Nor does Heal maintain that it does; instead she holds that only my sincere declaration or judgment that I believe that p ‘constitutes in me a belief that p’ (Heal 1994: 22). Sincerity, however, is not enough. Sincerity is a matter of declaring what I believe that I believe and in cases of self-deception such sincerity co-exists with the absence of first-order belief. Religious belief is a case in point: someone who has lost their religious belief but does not admit this to herself may make a sincere declaration of faith without thereby resurrecting it. So, contrary to Heal’s proposal, in the case of belief even a sincere occurrence of a first-person representation of a belief (‘I believe . . .’) does not constitute that state of affairs, the belief in question. Furthermore, the role of sincerity in her account is unsatisfactory; for since sincerity involves a first-person higher-order belief, the need to include it as a condition under which a representation of a first-person belief constitutes that belief threatens a regress: for what constitutes the higherorder first-person belief, if not a further declaration of this belief that must itself be sincere? These points suffice, I think, to undermine Heal’s proposal. But it is nonetheless helpful to consider a related line of thought concerning acceptance. I take acceptance to be a public act whereby one commits oneself to the truth of some proposition which has been put before one for an opinion; it can be expressed by saying ‘I accept’, though it is normally expressed just by saying ‘Yes’ in response to a question, just as one expresses rejection by saying ‘No’. These speech acts do

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indeed have ‘a sort of performative character’; for by performing them, I make it true that I accept, or reject, the proposition in question, and unlike the case with expressions of belief, sincerity is not a precondition of acceptance. Whatever Galileo may have said under his breath about the movement of the earth, by answering ‘No’ to the Inquisition’s question as to whether the earth moves, he then accepted that the earth does not move. Yet there is a connection with belief: for even if Galileo did not believe what he then accepted, by accepting it he represented himself as believing it. In giving a public commitment to the truth of a proposition one shows oneself as thus committed to its truth, and thus as believing it. This performative aspect of acceptance is, not surprisingly, linked to the fact that it should be voluntary. For it is only where a speech act is voluntary that it can give rise to a commitment of any kind, including a commitment to the truth of the proposition accepted. Where torture or other forms of coercion have been used to secure acceptance, acceptance normally becomes void in just the way that contracts secured under duress are void; an utterance of ‘I accept’ under duress is not a way of entering into a commitment. Nonetheless, I myself may regard my coerced acceptance as a shameful betrayal; and although others may urge me to forgive myself, the fact that we understand this kind of self-reproach bears witness to the performative aspect of the speech act of acceptance. Despite the unbearable coercion, it may still appear to me that by uttering the words ‘I accept’ I did accept a doctrine that I actually hold to be unacceptable or worse (these unpleasant questions about coercion and acceptance were famously explored by Arthur Koestler in Darkness at Noon and George Orwell in 1984). Because acceptance is an overt commitment to the truth of a proposition, it would seem that reasons for accepting a proposition should be grounds for its truth. Yet one can have reasons for accepting a proposition which are not only not grounds for its truth but which outweigh doubts about its truth—as when one is motivated by ties of personal loyalty or by considerations of personal gain. These are of course cases in which acceptance is not sincere; but what they show is that it is precisely the performative character of acceptance that pulls it away from being a straightforward expression of belief. Hence, although the first-person dimension of Moore’s paradox appears at first to fit well with Heal’s suggestion that belief has ‘a sort of performative character’, on further reflection it becomes clear that the necessarily overt and conventional character of a performative speech act such as acceptance precludes its being a basis for an account of belief which explicates Moore’s paradox. 4 Nonetheless, there is something important to be carried forward from the discussion of acceptance, namely the conception of an act whereby one commits

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oneself to the truth of a proposition. For this seems an essential element for an account of belief which, as Moore’s absurdities indicate, deals with the fact that we do not detach ourselves from our beliefs in the way in which we do detach ourselves from our assumptions. Yet since belief is not itself an act, any commitment of this kind inherent in belief must accrue to it from some other act, an act similar to acceptance but tied more closely to belief than acceptance is. I suggest that if we look to judgment, we will find what we are looking for. Judgment, unlike acceptance, is not a performative act of any kind. Nonetheless, like acceptance, it is often prompted by a doubt or a question and it is sometimes marked by an explicitly first-person thought—‘I think so-and-so’. More often judgment is just a straightforward mental affirmation, that so-andso is the case, and this connection invites a reconsideration of the nature of ordinary linguistic assertion. In my initial discussion (§1) of the relation between belief and assertion I treated assertion as a speech act with a complex structure of interlocking communicative intentions and beliefs which make Moorean assertions self-defeating. But, as I went on to indicate (§2), it is doubtful that it is a structure of this kind which makes assertion the act it is, and in the light of the previous account of acceptance, it is natural to consider instead the hypothesis that assertion is an act in which a speaker commits himself to the truth of what he says. This hypothesis does not entail that one always asserts what one says; but we normally do, and where a doubt is raised as to whether the speaker is indeed asserting what he says, rather than merely guessing, being ironic, or something similar, the matter can be resolved by an overt act of acceptance from which the speaker can no more subsequently dissociate himself than he can from an explicit promise. This account of assertion as a way of committing oneself to the truth of what one asserts is not perhaps incompatible with one which concentrates on the speaker’s communicative intentions; but once assertion is conceived in this way the relationship between assertion and communication is better thought of as indirect and not necessarily universal. One can suppose, for example, that the practice of assertion developed as a way of meeting the communicative needs of speakers; but that, once established, the practice does not require that in all cases speakers should have the communicative intentions it developed to fulfil. However that may be, the important point here is that this account of assertion offers the prospect of providing a basis for the immediate link between assertion and belief that Moore’s absurdities suggest without the need to bring in the communicative intentions of speakers. But to vindicate this suggestion more needs to be said about belief and, as a preliminary, about judgment, to which I now return. The discussion of acceptance proper showed that because it is a conventional act, it need not be sincere and may have motivations that are alien to its official truth-oriented appearance. Judgment, by contrast, involves no conventional act which enables it to become detached from the thinker’s deliberations; from the thinker’s perspective reasons for judging that p are simply evidence

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for p. Notoriously here too appearances can deceive: wishful thinking and selfdeception are always possible, and where they are operative judgment is in fact being influenced by the thinker’s wishes and fears, and not simply by his appraisal of evidence. But even for a reflective subject who recognizes the inevitability of some such wishful thinking on his part, it remains the case that the only reasons for him to judge that p are the considerations which he takes to be evidence for p in the first place. The issue that remains delicate here, however, is whether judgment, like acceptance, is to be thought of as voluntary. The reason for rejecting that characterization is that the attitudes in which we detach ourselves from truth are precisely voluntary attitudes such as assumption, supposition, and imagination; because we can assume whatever we choose to assume, we do not take it that that which we do assume is in fact true, even though whatever we assume we assume to be true. And yet the case of perception shows the mistake of moving to the opposite position, of taking it that our judgments are simply the involuntary products of processes over which we have no control. For it is because we have no control over appearances that we learn that in abnormal circumstances our perceptions are not to be relied upon; in such circumstances, as familiar skeptical arguments remind us, we learn to doubt the senses, and thus to detach judgment from ‘mere’ appearance. Where then is judgment to be situated? It seems to me that the point which I have carried over from the discussion of acceptance, namely that in judgment we make a commitment to the truth of a proposition, is intelligible only if judgment is conceived as a voluntary act. No outcome of an involuntary process could bring with it a commitment of this kind. Hence what is needed is a way of differentiating judgment from voluntary attitudes such as assumption. My suggestion is that whereas in the case of assumption and similar attitudes we decide what to assume, in the case of judgment our decision is limited to deciding whether to believe something is the case, whether to commit ourselves to its truth. So judgment is not deciding what to believe, nor indeed what is the case: we have no such cognitive powers. Even wishful thinking is not a matter of deciding to believe what it best suits one to believe but only of being subconsciously motivated, in deciding whether to believe something, by one’s wishes—which are not of course reasons for the judgment at all. Nonetheless, judgment is a voluntary act: thus when doubts arise we can, if we so choose, suspend belief and initiate further investigations. The outcome of these investigations is, necessarily, not decided by us; but when they are over our responsibility returns as we make up our mind whether or not to commit ourselves to the truth of the proposition which they have put before us as worthy of commitment. Implicit in this account of judgment is a normative conception of belief itself, as a state whereby a thinker maintains his commitment to the truth of the proposition judged. This commitment is manifested in the thinker’s use of the proposition in question as a reason, especially as a reason for action. For by this

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use of his belief the thinker puts it to work; he relies on it to fulfil his intentions in a way in which he could not similarly rely on what he merely assumes to be the case. ‘Actions speak louder than words’ in that they reveal our beliefs by showing the commitments which actually inform the practical reasonings that lead us to our actions. Since these practical reasons are causes of action, it follows that this normative conception of belief sustains our common sense conviction of the causal role of beliefs. However, this conception of belief is different from the familiar functionalist conception of belief. For that is the conception of a state identified by its causal role in mediating interactions between memory, sensory inputs, motivational drives (desires), and behavioural outputs. So on this view beliefs are thought of as states whose representational content has been produced by a combination of sensation, memory, and inference and which is revealed by the distinctive causal contribution of these states to the causation of behaviour directed at the satisfaction of desires. On the face of it, this conception of belief does not account for the absurdity of Moorean beliefs. For I can readily have the thought: my physical state is prompting me, or my body, to behave as though it is raining, but it isn’t raining; and even if the functionalist position is made more sophisticated by introducing a normative element so that, say, my beliefs are taken to include a state whose ‘proper’ function is to prompt behaviour which will satisfy my desires only if it is raining, it remains the case that I can sensibly hold that my mind/brain includes a state of this kind even though it is not raining. So Moore’s paradox shows that functionalist accounts of belief are essentially incomplete (see Heal 1994: 12–20 for an extended discussion of this point). Before one can infer that Moore’s paradox thereby refutes functionalist theories of mind, however, there are further moves to be taken into account. In particular, there is a neo-Humean strategy which, starting from a theory of mind based upon a functionalist account of sub-personal states which do not give rise to Moore’s paradox, holds that our ordinary conception of the subject of thought (‘I’) as a locus for normative commitments such as those exhibited by Moore’s absurdities is a socially constructed artifice which expresses personal responsibilities but does not have a role in explanatory psychological laws (see Dennett 1991: ch. 13 for a position of this kind). I myself do not take this view; but I do not wish to argue the point here (see Stroud 1977: 127–40, 236–7 for a critical discussion of Hume’s account of the self which is relevant to neo-Humean proposals). For a successful reconciling strategy of this kind, so far from undermining the normative, conception of belief advanced here, will just show how it is possible to employ this conception within a metaphysical perspective founded upon the explanatory paradigms of the natural sciences. What does still need some attention is the relationship between perception and belief. For on the one hand, the fact that perception does not give rise to further versions of Moore’s paradox, that there is no absurdity in either ‘It appears to me to be raining, though it isn’t’ or ‘It is raining, though it does not

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appear to me to be’, shows that there is a crucial distinction between perception and belief. Yet on the other hand, the intimate relationship between them is shown by the way in which our perceptions are constantly furnishing us with perceptual beliefs without any explicit judgment on our part: we have a standing disposition to trust our perceptions, to believe what we see, unless there are grounds for doubt. This latter point is central to the common sense strand of British empiricism that runs from Locke to Moore, and is especially well expressed by Reid: ‘Perception commands our belief upon its own authority, and disdains to rest its authority upon any reasoning whatsoever’ (Reid 1783: II, ch. 5, pp. 109–10). Yet we also recognize that this authority is fallible—which is why we recognize that there are no perceptual versions of Moore’s paradox. Hence, despite Reid’s affirmation that perception’s authority does not rest on ‘any reasoning whatsoever’, our unreflective disposition to trust our perceptions stands in need of some reflective justification, or at least explanation. Empiricists will offer a justification which invokes beliefs about the reliability of our perceptual systems. Since these beliefs are themselves perceptually grounded, this approach raises issues concerning circularity that are familiar from discussions of the Cartesian circle and induction. This paper is not the place to address these issues, but my own judgment is that externalist conceptions of justification provide a way of defusing the charge of circularity while also accounting for the fact that for the most part we believe what we perceive without thinking about the matter, and that it could not be otherwise (for a much fuller discussion of this matter, see Burge 2003). 5 I have been suggesting that belief has a normative character, that it is the state of being committed to the truth of a proposition. I made this suggestion following my discussion of Heal’s proposal that Moore’s paradox derives from the quasiperformative character of first-person declarations of belief. Having argued that Heal’s proposal was not satisfactory, however, it remains for me to show that my own suggestion fares any better as an account of Moore’s paradox. Consider first the statement: (1) It’s raining but I don’t believe that it is. As Moore says, the sense of the absurd arises here from the fact that by asserting the first clause, the speaker implies that he believes that it is raining, whereas in the second clause he explicitly disavows this belief. The tricky issue concerns the rationale for this first implication. On the account I am proposing, in assertion we commit ourselves to the truth of the proposition we assert and thereby imply that we believe it since belief just is the state of being thus committed. So the speaker of (1) first commits himself to the truth of the proposition that it is raining and then denies that he has any such commitment. The absurdity is

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therefore inherent in the assertion of (1), without the need to bring in any explicit reference to the confusing indications thereby given to an audience as to what the speaker intends them to believe. Moore’s second type of absurd assertion is exemplified by the statement: (2) It’s raining but I believe that it isn’t. In this case, the belief implied by the assertion of the first clause, that it is raining, is obviously inconsistent with the belief which the speaker goes on to say that he has. So on my account of assertion and belief the situation is one in which the speaker begins by committing himself to the truth of the proposition that it is raining but then affirms that he is also committed to the truth of the proposition that it is not raining. What is absurd here is not the existence of inconsistent commitments, but the deliberate espousal of a commitment which is obviously inconsistent with another commitment to whose existence the speaker also commits himself. I argued in §2 that a full account of Moore’s paradox needs to handle the absurdity of Moorean thoughts as well as that of Moorean assertions, and that my own (1990) account of the former was not satisfactory. So this new approach also needs to meet this requirement. Consider therefore a type-(1) thought, such as someone, Jones, judging that it is raining and that he does not believe that it is. According to my account of what is involved here, by his judgment Jones commits himself both to the truth of the proposition that it is raining and to the truth of proposition that he has no commitment to the truth of the same proposition. But this is an absurd act: for by committing himself to the truth of the proposition that it is raining Jones gives himself a commitment of the kind whose non-existence he also commits himself to in the very same act. So considered as a putative act of commitment the judgment is absurd: it both makes a commitment and equally disavows the existence of any such commitment. In the case of type-(2) thoughts the reasoning is similar. Here Jones judges that it is raining and that he does not believe that it is; on my account Jones here commits himself both to the truth of the proposition that it is raining and to his being committed to the falsehood of this proposition. Again this act is absurd, for the initial commitment obviously conflicts with the further commitment which Jones also affirms in the very same act. We do of course find ourselves from time to time with inconsistent commitments, but it is absurd to make commitments whose inconsistency is obvious in the very judgment itself.

6 This new approach, centred on the normative character of belief, judgment, and assertion, does therefore explicate the absurdity of Moorean judgments in much the same way as it deals with that of Moorean assertions. This seems to

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me a significant merit. The approach works by identifying conflicts among the commitments inherent in Moorean assertions and thoughts; as such it is rather different from approaches which invoke principles of epistemic logic concerning belief in order to exhibit the absurdity of Moore’s assertions, and in this final section I shall briefly explore this difference. To present an account of this latter kind, we should go back to (1). Since this is of the form ‘p but I don’t believe that p’ it is obviously a counterexample to the principle: (3) p ⇒ I believe p. But since (3) is clearly untenable, the absurdity of (1) cannot derive from its being a counterexample to (3). (3), however, fails to capture the fact that the absurdity of (1) depends on the fact that the speaker of (1) is the person who then disavows the belief which he has implied that he has. So supposing (1) to express A’s judgment that p but he does not believe that p, we should perhaps take the absurdity of the assertion of (1) to arise from its implications when combined with the principle: (4) A judges that p ⇒ A judges that he believes that p. For, given (4), A’s judgment entails both that he judges that he believes that p and that he judges that he does not believe that p; hence, the suggestion is, one should explicate the absurdity of asserting (1) by reference to the fact that, given (4), it entails that A makes contradictory judgments. But (4) is clearly false too: judgment does not always bring with it the reflective judgment that one believes (or judges) what one judges. One can avoid this problem by moving to (5) A judges that p ⇒ if the question arises for A whether he believes p, A judges that he believes p and offer (5) instead as the basis for the absurdity of asserting (1). But this remains unpersuasive since (5) is untenable for two reasons. First, once the question whether he believes p is explicitly raised, A may change his mind concerning p. Second, A may have prejudices which he does not recognize; for example A may in fact believe that his wife should do the housework and yet, if asked about the matter, disavow any such belief. Many of the same points can be made in connection with (2). Here, because (2) is of the form ‘p but I believe not-p’ a similar path of reasoning leads to the suggestion that the absurdity of (2) arises from the application of the principle: (6) A judges that he believes p ⇒ A believes p to A’s judgment that p but he believes not-p. For, given (6), A’s judgment entails both that A believes not-p and that A believes p, and thus that he has obviously inconsistent beliefs. (6) does look plausible at first; but as I observed in connection with Heal’s position it is vulnerable to counterexamples involving self-deception. A may judge that he believes that his work is going well; but it may also be the case that sub-consciously he does not believe this at all, indeed

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that he knows only too well that it is not going well, and that the anxiety this provokes in him leads him to form the deceptive belief that it is going well. What is going wrong in these attempts to exhibit Moore’s absurdities as the violation of general principles concerning belief is that because of the many ways in which we can mistake ourselves it is doubtful that there are any suitable principles of this kind which merit acceptance. One might then wonder whether my own approach is not equally vulnerable to difficulties of this kind; to, for example, vindicating (6). I think not: for me, A’s judgment that he believes that p involves A’s committing himself to the truth of the proposition that he is committed to the truth of p; but this act of commitment does not entail that A is actually committed to the truth of p. Nor does my account of the absurdity of (2) presuppose any such entailment. Instead it points to the absurdity of embracing, within a single assertion or judgment, a commitment both to the truth of p and to one’s being committed to the falsehood of p; for even though this act does not entail that one is committed to the falsehood of p, it is absurd to commit oneself to having such a commitment just when one also commits oneself to the truth of p. Thus, the difference between my approach and that which seeks to exhibit the absurdity of Moore’s assertions in the light of general epistemic principles is that the absurdity of the commitments I take to be inherent in Moorean assertions and judgments does not require the entailments between judgments and higher-order attitudes that are characteristic of epistemic logic. So, although my approach does of course make general claims concerning the normative character of assertion, judgment and belief, these claims are not captured by general principles of this kind. They are instead best exhibited through the absurdity of the first-person assertions about belief by means of which Moore first brought this whole topic to attention. REFERENCES Baldwin, T. (1990), G. E. Moore (London: Routledge). Burge, T. (2003), ‘Perceptual Entitlement’, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 67: 503–49. Dennett, D. (1991), Consciousness Explained (London: Penguin). Heal, J. (1994), ‘Moore’s Paradox: A Wittgensteinian Approach’, Mind, 103: 5–24. Grice, H. P. (1989), ‘Meaning’, in H. P. Grice, Studies in the Way of Words (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press). Moore, G. E. (1942), ‘A Reply to my Critics’, in P. A. Schilpp (ed.), The Philosophy of G. E. Moore (La Salle, Ill.: Open Court). (1959), ‘Russell’s Theory of Descriptions’, in G. E. Moore, Philosophical Papers (London: Allen & Unwin). (1993), ‘Moore’s Paradox’, in G. E. Moore, Selected Writings, ed. T. Baldwin (London: Routledge).

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Reid, T. (1783), Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man (Edinburgh), repr. (2002), ed. Derek R. Brookes (Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State Press). Stroud, B. (1977), Hume (London: Routledge). Williams, J. (1979), ‘Moore’s Paradox: One or Two?’, Analysis, 39: 141–2. (2006), ‘Moore’s Paradoxes and Conscious Belief’, Philosophical Studies, 127: 383–414.

5 Moore’s Paradox, Evans’s Principle, and Iterated Beliefs John N. Williams

1 . I N T RO D U C T I O N G. E. Moore famously observed (1942: 543) that to assert I went to the pictures last Tuesday but I don’t believe that I did would be ‘absurd’. Moore calls it a ‘paradox’ that this absurdity persists despite the fact that what I say about myself might be true. For you may consistently suppose that I went to the pictures last Tuesday but fail to believe that I did. Moreover, if you contradict my assertion then your words, ‘If you went to the pictures last Tuesday then you believe that you did’ need not be true.¹ Most people who are confronted with Moore’s example would say that in some sense I have contradicted myself, even after admitting that no contradiction lies in my words. It is no less absurd of me to silently believe such a possible truth. So a I am grateful for discussion with Tan Yoo Guan, Mark Nowacki, Mitchell Green, and Alan Hájek. Two anonymous referees for this volume provided very useful comments. ¹ In parsing your ‘Either you did not go to the pictures last Tuesday or you believe that you did’ as ‘If you went to the pictures last Tuesday then you believe that you did’, I take ‘if ’ as implication. Although such an inference is generally invalid, most would allow it here. For example, Stalnaker (1975 and 1984) would allow it on pragmatic grounds because you don’t know whether it is true that I went to the pictures or whether it is true that I believe I did. If we symbolize ‘You believe that you went to the pictures last Tuesday’ as ‘Bp’, we have the following proof: 1. ∼(p & ∼Bp) Suppose the falsehood of omissive Moorean assertion 2. ∼p v ∼∼Bp De Morgan’s Law 3. ∼p v Bp ∼ ∼ elimination 4. p → Bp → equivalence So your denial amounts to a possibly true assertion of my omniscience about my own recent movements.

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natural way of solving the paradox is to explain the absurdity of such a belief, as well as the corresponding assertion, in a way that identifies a contradiction-like phenomenon with something other than its content. It is important to note that Moore also observes that for me to assert, I believe that he has gone out, but he has not would be likewise ‘absurd’ (1944: 204) despite the fact my words might be true.² Unlike his first example, which has the omissive form om) p & I don’t believe that p, this has the commissive³ form, com) p & I believe that not-p.⁴ This difference between the omission of specific true belief and the commission of a specific mistake in belief is inherited from the genuine difference between atheists and agnostics. So any adequate account of Moorean absurdity must explain the absurdity of commissive assertions and beliefs as well. Such an explanation would also have to identify other examples that intuitively seem to share the paradigmatic absurdity of Moore’s own. These include Roy Sorensen’s examples All my present beliefs are mistaken⁵ I have no beliefs God knows that I am not a theist and God knows that I am an atheist none of which is a conjunction. If these examples are essentially like Moore’s then an adequate account of Moorean absurdity should explain their absurdity in the same way. ² Your denial of my assertion amounts to ‘If you believe that he has gone out then he has gone out’. For if we symbolize ‘You believe that he has gone out’ as ‘Bp’ we have the following proof: 1. ∼(Bp & ∼p) Suppose the falsehood of commissive Moorean assertion 2. ∼Bp v ∼∼p De Morgan’s Law 3. ∼Bp v p ∼ ∼ elimination 4. Bp → p →equivalence This time, your denial amounts to a possibly true assertion of the infallibility of my specific belief. ³ Sorensen coins these useful terms in (1988: 16). ⁴ This formal difference is disguised by Moore’s examples. If we formalize ‘I went to the pictures last Tuesday but I don’t believe that I did’ as ‘p & ∼Bp’ then ‘I believe that he has gone out, but he has not’ becomes ‘Bp & ∼p’. This commutes to ‘∼p & Bp’. This may be represented as ‘p & B∼p’. ⁵ See Sorensen (1988: ch. 1). One of Sorensen’s examples is actually ‘Although you think all my opinions are mistaken, you are always right’. To simplify discussion, I take this as ‘All my present beliefs are mistaken’.

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Sorensen (2000) also gives a second set of examples in which belief operators are iterated, such as the omissive God exists but I don’t believe that I’m a theist and the commissive God exists but I believe that I’m an atheist. These have the forms om1 ) p & I don’t believe that I believe that p and com1 ) p & I believe that I believe that not-p where the superscript denotes the order of iteration of the belief-operator. Let us call these, Sorensen’s ‘iterated cases’. Sorensen comments (2000: 29) that om1 or com1 seem less absurd to believe or assert than om or com. Moreover as iteration increases, omissive absurdity appears to decrease, while commissive absurdity does not. Thus with four iterations om4 ) p & I don’t believe that I believe that I believe that I believe that I believe that p seems less absurd to believe or assert than om1 , whereas the absurdity of believing or asserting com4 ) p & I believe that I believe that I believe that I believe that I believe that not-p seems undiminished. Here is how I will proceed. In §2 I will present the problem of giving a non-mysterious explanation of what justifies my second-order beliefs with best authority. In §3 I will supply a tentative argument for ‘Evans’s principle’: if I am justified in believing that p, then I am justified in believing that I believe that p. This delivers the non-mysterious explanation. In §4 I will reply to objections to this argument. In §5 I will use Evans’s principle to explain the absurdity of believing om or com. In §6 I will extract a definition of Moorean belief from Moore’s two examples. This enables me in §7 to explain the absurdity of other beliefs that are essentially akin to Moore’s examples. In §8 I will demonstrate difficulties in Sorensen’s own account of his iterated cases. In §9 I will argue that despite appearances, any belief in any iteration of om or com is equally absurd, as explained by Evans’s principle. In §10, I will explain the absurdity of Moorean assertion in terms of the fact that the intention of such an assertor to be thought a sincere truth-teller is necessarily frustrated. Finally in §11, I will use the whole account to explain why only omissive assertions, as opposed to beliefs, decrease in absurdity as iterations increase.

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2 . J U S T I F I A B LY B E L I EV I N G W H AT M Y OW N B E L I E F S A R E : T H E A P PE A L TO I N T RO S PE C T I O N Any account of self-knowledge must explain two facts. First, what justifies me in ascribing to myself the belief, say, that it is raining, is unlike what justifies you in ascribing that belief to me. Second, I am normally the best authority on my own beliefs. An appeal to introspection would claim that your justification for thinking that I hold the belief that it is raining consists in your observation of my behaviour, from which you inductively infer the best explanation that I hold that belief. But my justification for ascribing that belief to myself is neither based upon observation of my own behaviour, nor upon any inference, but is based upon an attention to my own mental states that is normally immune from error. The problem with this claim is that it is utterly mysterious. What is ‘attention to my own mental states?’ And why is it normally immune from error? Thinking of introspection as a form of perception or ‘inward looking’ deepens the mystery.⁶ If introspection were a faculty of perception, it would have no physical organ. And the phenomenology of self-knowledge is not that of perception. What it feels like to ascertain whether I hold a certain belief, if indeed it feels like anything at all, is not what it feels like to see, touch, or smell something. Moreover, perceptual mistakes are honest mistakes, but mistakes I make about my own beliefs typically reveal a way in which I am at fault. In a first case of perceptual mistake, suppose that I come to believe that it is raining because I see water that looks like rain, although in fact it comes from a concealed sprinkler. In a second case I acquire the belief because a trick of the light generates the illusion of falling water. My perceptual mechanism may function perfectly in either case. In the first case but not the second, I really do see what I seem to see, namely falling water, but mistake it for rain. In a third case, having my drink spiked with a drug causes me to experience the hallucination of rain. In no case am I at fault in mistakenly believing that it is raining. In the first case, my mistake stems from my ignorance of the source of the falling water. In the second, it stems from my ignorance that conditions of light make my apparent perceptions unreliable. In the third, it stems from my ignorance that my perceptual mechanism is malfunctioning. Such ignorance constitutes no fault. My mistakes are honest, not epistemically blameworthy. By contrast, a typical case in which I make a mistake about my own beliefs arises when I tell you that I do not believe that women are inferior to men. My assertion may be sincere yet false because I am blind to the way I treat women. You may be in a better position to recognize that my boorish behaviour manifests the repressed belief that I sincerely deny having. ⁶ The past participle of introspicere means ‘to look inside’.

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This would not be an honest mistake but would reveal a degree to which I am epistemically blameworthy. We now have reasons to look for an alternative account of what justifies my beliefs about my own beliefs. I will supply it in §4, via Evans’s principle, to which I now turn. 3 . EVA N S ’ S P R I N C I P L E In The Varieties of Reference, Gareth Evans observes (1982: 225–6): If someone asks me ‘Do you think there is going to be a third world war?’ I must attend, in answering him, to precisely the same outward phenomena as I would attend to if I were answering the question ‘Will there be a third world war?’ I get myself in a position to answer the question whether I believe that p by putting into operation whatever procedure I have for answering the question whether p . . . We can encapsulate this procedure for answering questions about what one believes in the following simple rule: whenever you are in a position to assert that p, you are ipso facto in a position to assert ‘I believe that p’

Now what we might call: Evans’s Rule: If I am in a position to assert that p then I am in a position to assert that I believe that p is probably not meant to encompass insincere assertions such as lies. So it is best read as the rule that whenever I am in a position to sincerely assert that p (in other words to assert that p in the belief that p) then I am in a position to sincerely assert that I believe that p (in other words to assert that I believe that p in the belief that I believe that p). We cannot take being ‘in a position’ to make sincere assertions as having justification for making them. I may have justification, in the form of forensic clues I have yet to analyse, for believing that Smith is the murderer. But since I don’t yet realize that what I have is justification, I am not in a position to sincerely assert that he is the murderer. So it is better to take being ‘in a position’ to make sincere assertions as being justified in making them, in the sense that the justification is available to me in a way that the justification encapsulated in unanalysed clues is not. The justification is available to me if I could produce it if I were sensibly asked to provide justification. I am justified in believing that p just in case I would have a justified belief that p, if I were to form the belief that p. I will not attempt to produce a full analysis of justified belief. But what I have in mind is roughly captured by the proposal that if I have a justified belief then I have formed and sustained it in a reliable way and I have no reason to doubt the reliability of the way I have formed or sustained it. Moreover, if I were sensibly asked to provide justification for it, I could do so. This reading coheres with Evans’s remark: If a judging subject applies this procedure, then necessarily he will gain knowledge of one of his own mental states: even the most determined sceptic cannot find here a gap in which to insert his knife. (1982: 225)

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What follows now is what I call Evans’s Principle: If I am justified in believing that p, then I am justified in believing that I believe that p. Although Evans provides no argument for his rule, it is highly plausible. For if you ask me whether I think that it is raining, I will normally treat this question as the question, ‘Is it raining?’ So any justification I have for a sincere answer to the question of whether p will be precisely the same justification for a sincere answer to the question of whether I believe that p. It does seem true that in most pragmatic contexts the two questions are treated interchangeably. But not in all. For example, if you ask me whether the pubs are still open, I may reply, ‘I think so, but don’t quote me’. Since you are interested in getting to the pubs rather than the state of my beliefs, you would not take this answer as a yes to the question, ‘Are the pubs still open?’ Since Evans’s principle is credible, a failure to supply a reason for it would not be fatal to what follows. However, here is a simple argument for it:⁷ (P1) All circumstances in which I am justified in believing that p are circumstances that tend to make me believe that p. (P2) All circumstances that tend to make me believe that p are circumstances in which I am justified in believing that I believe that p. (C) All circumstances in which I am justified in believing that p are circumstances in which I am justified in believing that I believe that p. The first premise is plausible. For example, given that my apparent perceptions of rain are generally reliable, they justify me in believing that it is raining. If I am asked why I believe that it is raining, I may reply, ‘Because it looks like rain’. Such apparent perceptions of rain also tend to make me believe that it is raining. This is the sense in which ‘seeing is believing’. The premise is also supported by the pragmatic success of justification; if circumstances in which we are justified in our beliefs were not those that tend to make us form them, then it would be hard to explain the practical value of rationality. The second premise is plausible as well. Circumstances that tend to put me into a certain state ipso facto count as inductive justification for thinking that I am in that state. For example, if drinking brandy tends to make me go red in the face, then the fact that I am drinking brandy provides me with inductive justification for thinking that I am red-faced. Likewise, circumstances that tend to make me believe that it raining, such as seeming to see rain, give me good inductive reason to think that I have come to believe that it is raining. Of course, I don’t have to consciously think, ‘When it seems to be raining, I usually believe ⁷ See Williams (2004) for a brief sketch of this argument. In what follows I develop it and defend it against objections. Two further objections to it are made by Hamid Vahid (2005), to which I reply in Williams (2006).

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that it is raining. It seems to be raining again, so I probably believe that it is raining’. Nonetheless the inductive justification is available to me. If someone asks, ‘Why do you think you believe that it is raining?’ I may reply, ‘Because that’s what I always believe when it looks like rain’. So my apparent perceptions of rain justify both my belief that it is raining and my belief that I believe that it is raining in virtue of different sets of reliable connections. I am justified in believing that it is raining on the basis of seeming to see rain, because seeming to see rain is reliably connected with the occurrence of rain. And the very same basis of seeming to see rain justifies me in thinking that I believe that it is raining, because seeming to see rain is reliably connected with my coming to believe that it is raining. My argument for Evans’s principle would hold for any form of justification. For example, if seeming to remember that it rained yesterday justifies me in thinking that it indeed rained yesterday, that is because my apparent memories are generally reliable. And the very same basis of seeming to remember that it rained yesterday justifies me in thinking that I believe that it rained yesterday, because seeming to remember that it rained yesterday is reliably connected with my coming to believe that it rained yesterday. The principle also explains why I am normally the best authority on my own beliefs. Suppose that you and I are both standing at the window looking at the weather. To ascertain whether I believe that it is raining, I simply ascertain whether it is raining. I may justifiably ascertain this on the basis of my apparent perception of rain. But your apparent perception of rain will not justify you in thinking that I believe that it raining. Instead, you need to observe my verbal and non-verbal behaviour (as when I unfurl my umbrella or say ‘It’s raining’) and then make an inference to my belief that counts as the best explanation of my behaviour. Alternatively, you may observe me observing the rain and then infer by analogy that since you have come to believe that it is raining then so have I. In either case you are liable to mistakes in observation. In the first case you may mistake my tendency to play with my umbrella as a sign of interest in the weather or mishear my question ‘It’s raining?’ as an assertion of rain. In the second case you may mistake falling water from a hidden sprinkler for rain or mistake my daydreaming at the window for my observation of weather. By contrast, I need only observe the weather. Nor do I need to make any inference at all. So you are liable to error in ways that I am not. Of course I may mistake falling water for rain. But in the second case, that mistake would not undermine my justification for correctly ascribing to myself the mistaken belief that it is raining. We now have a non-mysterious alternative to the introspective account of what justifies my beliefs about my own beliefs, namely that it is precisely whatever justifies that first-order belief itself, whether it is perception, memory, deductive inference, or even inductive inference from observation of behaviour. The account also explains why I am normally the best authority on my own beliefs.

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It is also is consistent with the fact that I may sometimes adopt your methods of justifiably ascribing beliefs to me. To return to a previous example, after you say ‘But look at the way you treat women!’, I might start to observe my non-verbal behaviour towards women and so discover my repressed belief that women are inferior. There would be nothing irrational in adopting this method, since the discovery it succeeds in unearthing would represent a useful insight into my lack of self-knowledge. But that insight could only be useful if it led me to revise my beliefs in a way that is an overall improvement in my rationality and consequently, my public behaviour. Before the insight, I believed that women were inferior but did not believe that I held this belief. The most likely explanation of my self-blindness is that there was no justification for my prejudice against women. For by Evans’s principle, had justification been available to me for believing that women are inferior, then that same justification would have been available to me for thinking that I hold the belief that women are inferior. But now that I have recognized that I do hold that belief, I should look for justification for it. Finding none available, I should abandon my prejudice. Of course if I were always incapable of acting on Evans’s rule then I would be deeply irrational. For then I would have to constantly employ third-person therapeutic methods. This would mean forgoing a first-person method of obtaining a justifiable view of my own cognition that enjoys best authority because it is immune to the mistakes in observation that another person might make.

4 . O B J E C T I O N S TO M Y A RG U M E N T F O R EVA N S ’ S PRINCIPLE — AND REPLIES I anticipate two objections to (P1) All circumstances that justify me in believing that p are circumstances that tend to make me believe that p. Suppose there is a drug that sharpens my senses, while also making me more sceptical of everything. I take the drug, and I see that it is raining (very distinctly, thanks to the drug). I am justified in believing that it is raining—very much so, since my sensory apparatus is working even better than usual. But this circumstance does not tend to make me believe that it’s raining, since I’ve become so sceptical.⁸ I reply that in circumstances in which I’m sceptical of everything, I’m not justified in forming any beliefs. My senses are heightened, but since I don’t trust my senses, I’m not justified in forming any beliefs on the basis of them. ⁸ I owe this objection to Alan Hájek.

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Here is the second objection. Suppose that my neighbour has planted a tree in his garden. I look out of my window and see the tree. Although my sensory apparatus is working perfectly, I misclassify what I see as a bush, so I do not tend to believe that my neighbour has planted a tree. Nonetheless, my clearly seeing the tree justifies me in thinking that she has planted a tree, in the sense that were I to form this belief, it would be justified.⁹ My reply is to simply deny this last claim. From my point of view, what I see is a bush, not a tree. The fact that I seem to see a bush does not justify my belief that my neighbour has planted a tree. For suppose that I do form the belief that my neighbour has planted a tree. Then if I were asked to justify this belief, the only ‘justification’ I could produce would be the claim that she has planted a bush. That certainly does not count as justification. Two sorts of examples might be given against (P2) All circumstances that tend to make me believe that p are circumstances in which I am justified in believing that I believe that p. Suppose that my powers of perception are only highly reliable, whereas I am nearly infallible in introspecting my own beliefs. I seem to see rain, but for some reason, I do not form the belief that it is raining (it is, after all, only a tendency that I do so). By introspection, it is clear to me that I have not formed the belief that it is raining. My introspective justification that I have not formed the belief that it is raining, trumps any perceptual justification that I have formed this belief. So on balance, I am not justified in thinking that I believe that it is raining. I have two replies. First, the example is effective only if it describes circumstances in which I tend to believe that it is raining. True, circumstances in which I seem to see rain are such circumstances. But this is not the fullest, nor therefore the fairest, description of the circumstances depicted. A fuller description would include the fact that introspection makes it clear to me that I have not formed the belief that it is raining, presumably because I think that appearances are deceptive. In such circumstances I do not tend to believe that it is raining. Second, by my lights, I have no reason to think that the situation depicted can arise. The example assumes that introspection is a source of justification for my beliefs about what my first-order beliefs are, that is separate from what justifies my first-order beliefs. But if my account in the last section is correct, then there is no reason to think that there is any such faculty of introspection, because whatever justifies my second-order beliefs is precisely whatever justifies my first-order beliefs. Now consider a different sort of putative counterexample. Suppose that I take a drug that tends to make me paranoid while at the same time causing such extensive brain damage that I am incapable of forming higher-order beliefs. In this circumstance, I might tend to believe that people are persecuting me, but I am not justified in believing that I believe that people are persecuting me. In the ⁹ An anonymous referee for this volume made this useful objection.

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same spirit, suppose that a small child knows what rain is but lacks the concept of belief. When it stands in the rain, the child might tend to believe that it is raining, but it is not justified in thinking that it believes that it is raining, because it is incapable of forming beliefs about beliefs.¹⁰ In reply, recall that in §3, we noted that to say that I am justified in believing that p is neutral on the question of whether I actually believe that p. So the fact that I do not have the second-order belief does not show that I am not justified in holding it. Second, it seems reasonable to think that you cannot sensibly ask whether I would justifiably believe that I believe that people are persecuting me, were I to form this second-order belief. To ask this question already supposes that I suffer no drug-induced brain damage and so violates the example. Likewise I can attach no sense to the question of whether the small child standing in the rain would have a justified second-order belief, were he to form it. To suppose that he does form it is ruled out by the example. So neither objection is coherent. Finally, a counterexample might be given to the conclusion, in other words, Evans’s principle: (C) All circumstances in which I am justified in believing that p are circumstances in which I am justified in believing that I believe that p. Suppose that compelling scientific evidence justifies me in believing that spiders are harmless, yet psychological evidence, such as films of myself avoiding spiders, justifies me in believing that I do not believe that spiders are harmless. Since I cannot be justified in holding contradictory beliefs, I cannot be justified in believing that I do believe that spiders are harmless, although I am justified in believing that spiders are harmless.¹¹ I reply that the plausibility of this example depends upon separating the circumstances in which the scientific evidence is available to me from those in which the psychological evidence is available to me. Circumstances in which only the psychological evidence is available to me will not support the counterexample, because in such circumstances I am not justified in believing that spiders are harmless. But once both sets of evidence are available to me, then since the scientific data is compelling, I will acquire the belief that spiders are harmless. It is plausible to think that in this situation I would cease to be justified in thinking that I don’t hold this belief. 5 . T H E S O LU T I O N TO M O O R E ’ S PA R A D OX I N B E L I E F One highly plausible principle is Justification-distribution: If I am justified in believing that (p & q) then I am justified in believing that p and I am justified in believing that q. ¹⁰ I owe this objection to the same anonymous referee for this volume. ¹¹ I thank Mitchell Green for this objection.


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For illustration, if my apparent perception of hot and humid weather justifies me in believing that it is hot and humid then that same apparent perception justifies me in believing that it is hot and also justifies me in believing that it is humid. Of course, examples can’t prove a principle, but the fact that the principle resists our best efforts to falsify it by counterexample, highly confirms it. That in turn makes it plausible that the principle is not just a psychological generalization but specifies part of the nature of justification and belief. Now suppose that I believe that (it is raining but I don’t believe that it is raining). Suppose too, for reductio, that I am justified in believing this. By justification-distribution, I am justified in believing that I don’t believe that it is raining. But by the same principle, I am equally justified in believing that it is raining. So by Evans’s principle, I am justified in believing that I do believe that it is raining. This is impossible, because anything that justifies me in believing that something is the case (in this case that I believe that it is raining) renders me unjustified in believing that it is not the case (in this case that I don’t believe that it is raining) and vice versa. So it is impossible for me to be justified in believing anything of the form p & I don’t believe that p.¹² The impossibility is conceptual because it follows from three principles each of which partly constitutes the nature of justification or belief. This explains the distinctive absurdity of Moorean belief; it is absurd to hold a belief that I cannot, in principle, justify, despite the fact that it might be true. Beliefs in necessary falsehoods are differently absurd. So are beliefs for which any justification is very unlikely to ever materialize. My belief that it is both raining and not raining would be absurd because I cannot, in principle, justify it. But unlike a Moorean belief, it cannot be true. My belief that the number of stars is even would be absurd because in fact I have no reasonable expectation of ever finding any justification for it. Unlike a Moorean belief, the far-fetched supposition that ¹² Using ‘BJ p’ to denote ‘I am justified in believing that p’, given JD) EP) Rat)

BJ (p & q) → (BJ p & BJ q) Justification-distribution. BJ p → BJ Bp Evans’s principle.

BJ p → ∼BJ ∼p

1. BJ (p & ∼Bp)

2. BJ p & BJ ∼Bp

3. BJ ∼Bp

Impossibility of being justified in contradictory beliefs. Suppose for reductio. 1, JD. 2, &-elimination.

4. BJ p

2, &-elimination.

5. BJ Bp

4, EP.

6. ∼BJ ∼Bp

7.

BJ ∼Bp

&

5, Rat. ∼BJ ∼Bp

8. ∼ ♦BJ (p & ∼Bp)

3, 6, &-introduction. Contradiction. 1,7, Reductio ad absurdum.

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there is such justification is coherent. There is no contradiction in supposing the unlikely vindication of a theory of the origin of the universe that accurately predicts exactly 800 sextillion extant stars. So I am guilty of a severe contradiction-like irrationality in holding a Moorean belief, despite the fact that what I believe might be true of me. Moreover although the bare truth of what I believe (that I have failed to believe a specific truth about rain) constitutes no irrationality in me, to believe that I am guilty of that specific failure is indeed irrational unless it leads me to revise my beliefs. The natural way to do so would be to give up my belief that I don’t believe that it is raining. But how will such an account explain my absurdity holding the commissive belief that (it is raining but I believe that it is not raining)? Suppose again that I am justified in believing this. By justification-distribution, I am justified in believing that it is raining. I am also justified in believing that I believe that it is not raining. But Evans’s principle will not turn this into an absurd case in which I am justified in holding each of a pair of contradictory second-order beliefs. What is needed is the Analogue of Evans’s principle: If I am justified in believing that p then I am justified in believing that I do not believe that not-p. This follows from Evans’s principle, if I am minimally rational and reflective. Suppose that I take myself as believing that p. Then if I recognize that I am at all rational, I must also take myself as not believing that not-p. By Evans’s principle, if I am justified in believing that p then I should take myself to believe that p. So I should take myself as not believing that not-p. There is also an independent argument for the analogous principle: (P1) All circumstances in which I am justified in believing that p are circumstances in which I tend to not believe that not-p. (P2) All circumstances in which I tend to not believe that not-p are circumstances in which I am justified in believing that I do not believe that not-p. (C) All circumstances in which I am justified in believing that p are circumstances in which I am justified in believing that I do not believe that not-p. If the way that I form beliefs is not absurd then I do not tend to form contradictory beliefs. In that case, these premises are as plausible as their original counterparts. Assuming that my apparent perceptions of rain are generally reliable, they justify me in thinking that it is raining. They also tend to make me refrain from believing that it is not raining. We might say, ‘seeing is not disbelieving’. The second premise is also plausible. My apparent perceptions of rain are also reliably connected with my refraining from believing that it is not raining. So


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they afford me inductive reason to think that I do not believe that it is not raining. Now suppose for reductio that I am justified in believing that (it is raining but I believe that it is not raining). By justification-distribution, I am justified in believing that I do believe that it is not raining. But by the same principle, I am also justified in believing that it is raining. By the analogue of Evans’s principle, this means that I am justified in believing that I don’t believe that it is not raining. This is impossible. So it is impossible for me to be justified in the commissive belief.¹³ Although the bare truth of what I believe (namely that I have made a specific mistake about rain) constitutes no irrationality in me, to believe that I am guilty of that specific failure is indeed irrational unless it leads me to revise my beliefs for the better. The natural way to do so this time is to give up my belief that it is not raining.

6. DEFINING MOOREAN BELIEF We are now in position to extract a definition of Moorean belief from the commonalities of Moore’s two examples. First, both are examples of possible truths. Just as I may have forgotten my visit to the cinema, so I may hold the mistaken belief that my friend has gone out. Second, if these possible truths are actually true then what follows is that I am not omniscient or that I am fallible. This itself amounts to no irrationality on my part. My forgetfulness no more impugns my rationality than the fact that good evidence leads me to mistakenly believe that my friend has gone out. Third, as we just saw, it is impossible to be justified in believing either possible truth. It seems plausible to think that combining these three essential features of Moore’s examples is sufficient for any other belief to be relevantly similar. This gives us the proposal that: ¹³ Given JD) AEP) Rat)

BJ (p & q) → (BJ p & BJ q) BJ p → BJ ∼B∼p

Justification-distribution. Analogue of Evans’s principle.

BJ p → ∼BJ ∼p

Impossibility of being justified in contradictory beliefs.

1. BJ (p & B∼p)

Suppose for reductio.

2. BJ p & BJ B∼p

1, JD.

3. BJ B∼p

2, &-elimination.

4. BJ p

2, &-elimination.

5. BJ ∼B∼p

4, AEP.

6. ∼BJ ∼B∼p

3, Rat.

8. ∼ ♦BJ (p & B∼p)

1,7, Reductio ad absurdum.

7. BJ ∼B∼p & ∼BJ ∼B∼p

5, 6, &-introduction. Contradiction.

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Any belief is Moorean just in case its content is (i) a possible truth that (ii) constitutes no irrationality in the believer but (iii) it is impossible to be justified in that belief. Support for this proposed definition comes from the fact that it makes intuitively correct exclusions. Condition (i) correctly excludes beliefs in self-contradictions such as It is raining and not raining from being Moorean. Condition (ii) excludes beliefs the truth of which constitutes irrationality in me, such as It is raining but I believe that it is raining without the least justification. Condition (iii) excludes beliefs that I might justifiably hold, such as I am asserting nothing now. After all, I might be justified in quietly believing in my continuing obedience to a vow of silence. It also excludes I have at least one false belief. My believing this guarantees that it is true. For if that belief is false, then none of my beliefs is false. So all my beliefs are true, including my belief that I have at least one false belief. This means I have inconsistent beliefs, namely a set of beliefs that cannot all be true. But it also means that I cannot be mistaken in believing that I have at least one false belief. Since I almost certainly have some false beliefs anyway, my belief that this is so represents a rational motive for finding out which beliefs they are, notably by looking again at the quality of evidence. Inconsistency in my beliefs need not undermine my justification in the way that contradictory beliefs would. Justification for my belief that I have at least one false belief, such as the fact that I have held false beliefs in the past, need not count against any particular one of the vast number of beliefs I now hold. For the truth of my belief that at least one of my beliefs is false, does not entail that I have beliefs that contradict each other. Clearly, I need not believe that all of my beliefs are true, for I can see that this would count as hubris.

7 . A P P LY I N G T H E S O LU T I O N TO OT H E R M O O R E A N BELIEFS We may now apply this account to other Moorean beliefs. But first we should use the definition above to decide if the absurdity of a given belief is really Moorean. Consider

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All my present beliefs are mistaken. This can be read in two ways. If we read it as All my present beliefs (excluding this) are mistaken then this might be true of me, but then I am not irrational in believing it. For it might report the fact that I have just learned that I am the victim of systematic but convincing delusion. Moreover, I might be justified in believing that this is so. Such knowledge might well improve my rationality. So on this reading it is not Moorean, because it is excluded by condition (iii). On the other hand if we read it as All my present beliefs (including this) are mistaken then it is not a possible truth. For if it is true then my belief of it is mistaken, so it is false. So it is excluded by condition (i). So on no reading is this Moorean. By contrast, my belief that I have no beliefs intuitively shares the paradigmatic absurdity, as predicted by the definition, despite the fact that it is not a belief in a conjunction. We may now explain its absurdity. Suppose for reductio that I am justified in believing that I have no beliefs. Then by Evans’s principle, I am justified in believing that I have at least one belief, namely the belief that I have no beliefs. This is impossible, because I cannot be justified in holding each of a pair of contradictory beliefs (that I have no beliefs and that I have at least one belief). Or suppose for reductio that I am justified in believing that God knows that I am not a theist. Then I would be justified in believing that I do not believe that God exists. But I would also be justified in believing that God exists. So by Evans’s principle, I would be justified in believing that I do believe that God exists. But it is impossible to enjoy the same justification for each of a pair of contradictory beliefs. Parallel reasoning from the analogue of Evans’s principle, shows that it is impossible for me to be justified in believing that God knows that I am an atheist, for then I would be both justified in believing that I do believe that God does not exist and justified in believing that I do not believe that God does not exist.

8 . S O R E N S E N ’ S AC C O U N T O F H I S I T E R AT E D C A S E S We are now well placed to consider Sorensen’s comment that om1 or com1 seem less absurd to believe or assert than om or com and that as iteration increases, only omissive absurdity appears to decrease. Using the notation ‘Bn a∼p’ where the superscript denotes the number of iterations of the belief-operator (so that

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‘B3 ap’ means that ‘A believes that he believes that he believes that p’) Sorensen writes (2000: 42): My solution endorses the intuition that ‘p & Bn ∼ p’ is a Moorean sentence for all n, but ‘p & ∼Bn p’ need not be a Moorean sentence when n is a large number. ‘p & Bn a∼ p’ does not entail that a has a specifiable directly opposed belief. But ‘Ba(p & Bn a ∼ p)’ entails that a has directly opposed beliefs about p, under the assumption that a believes the consequences of his beliefs and that ‘p & Bn a ∼ p’ is true. This entailment follows directly for n = 1. When n >1, the entailment is secured by a necessary condition for self-attributing higher-order beliefs.

The condition in question is that if I believem+n that p then I believen that p (2000: 39–42) namely a recursive application of the principle of Belief elimination: If I believe that I believe that p then I believe that p. Sorensen appeals to this principle together with the principle that Belief is closed under logical consequence: If a logical consequence of the fact that p is that q, and I believe that p, then I believe that q. It follows that I cannot hold a true belief in com1 unless I hold contradictory, or ‘directly opposed’ beliefs about whether p. For if I believe that ( p & I believe that I believe that not-p), then a logical consequence of what I believe is that p, so I believe that p. But if my belief in com1 is true then I believe that I believe that not-p, in which case the principle of belief elimination ensures that I believe that not-p. Since that principle may be applied recursively, the same diagnosis of the absurdity will hold for any order of iteration of the belief-operator, as in com4 . It also applies to com, in which case the principle is not needed. Sorensen’s account diagnoses no such absurdity in om1 . If I believe that (p & I don’t believe that I believe that p), then a logical consequence of what I believe is that p, so I believe that p. But if my belief in om1 is true then I don’t believe that I believe that p, in which case the principle of belief elimination fails to apply. But there are a number of problems with this account. First, Sorensen must explain the absurdity of om as follows: If I believe that (p & I don’t believe that p), then a logical consequence of what I believe is that p, so I believe that p. But if my belief in om is true then I don’t believe that p. But this is not, as Sorensen seems to think, a case of contradictory beliefs but rather a flat contradiction. Second, I do seem to be absurd in some way if I believe om1 . For example, it would be absurd of me to believe that God exists but I think I am not a believer. Finally, Sorensen’s appeal to the truth of the principle that belief is closed under logical consequence is problematic. It is clear that it fails as a psychological principle. I may believe that a triangle is equilateral without believing that it is equiangular. Nor can it be true of me as a principle of ideal rationality, given

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Moore’s Paradox and Evans’s Principle Searle’s Principle (1992: 155–62): If I believe that p then I have the ability to think the occurrent thought that p.

This principle explains why although we may intuitively suppose that a dog has rudimentary beliefs about the food in its bowl (which helps us explain its behaviour as it strains at its leash) we hesitate to attribute to it the belief that it will be beaten in Lent. Clearly, it does not have the concept of Lent and so lacks the ability to think thoughts of Lent. The requirement also explains our difficulty in characterizing the beliefs of other species in any fine-grained way, since it is difficult to specify, using the linguistic expressions of our thoughts, exactly what concepts (or derivatively, thoughts) are available to those with radically different linguistic capacities and ways of behaving. Now suppose that I believe that Singapore is a democracy but have no idea what a plutocracy is. Since I cannot think the occurrent thought that Singapore is a plutocracy, I cannot think the occurrent thought that it is either a democracy or a plutocracy. So by Searle’s principle, I cannot believe that Singapore is either a democracy or a plutocracy. True, this will not stop me believing that the sentence ‘Singapore is either a democracy or a plutocracy’ states some truth or other. But that would be a different belief altogether. For one thing, it is not necessary that the sentence in question state what it does, because we could have used ‘plutocracy’ the way we now use ‘workers’ state’. Although I cannot think thoughts of plutocracy, I may still think the thought that a sentence that I don’t understand, states some truth or other. My ignorance of what counts as a plutocracy is an indictment of my knowledge, but hardly counts as a failure of ideal rationality. So if I am a maximally rational thinker, but I have no idea what a plutocracy is, I will see that my belief in the democracy of Singapore entails some truth or other that is stated by the sentence ‘Singapore is either a democracy or a plutocracy’. Moreover, I will believe that this sentence states some truth or other. But I will not know which truth is stated. Nor will I believe that truth. This falsifies Sorensen’s principle, even as a principle of ideal rationality. A defender of Sorensen might endorse Robert Audi’s (1994) distinction between a dispositional belief and a disposition to believe. Then she could claim that Sorensen’s principle should be understood as saying that a maximally rational person is disposed to believe the logical consequences of her original beliefs.¹⁴ But this move won’t help Sorensen. Since I am unable to think thoughts about plutocracies, I cannot form any beliefs about them (as opposed to forming beliefs about sentences). But then I cannot be disposed to form such beliefs either, because surely I cannot be disposed to form what I am unable to form. Moreover, since an infinite series of similar disjunctions are entailed by a first disjunct, the ¹⁴ As suggested by a second anonymous referee for this volume.

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principle compels us to say that an ideally rational believer would believe (or be disposed to believe) each of an infinite series of similar disjunctions. Searle’s principle falsifies this prediction in the case of an ideally rational thinker that lacks the concepts needed to think the second disjunct. Sorensen tries to circumvent this difficulty by making my ‘thorough obedience’ to the principle a test of my degree of ideal rationality (1988: 37). But although we might admit that degrees of rationality are vague, surely there is a difference between total obedience and none. So what is missing from Sorensen’s account is a principled degree of disobedience to the principle that is distinctive of the degree of Moorean irrationality. This means that Moorean absurdity cannot be explained in terms of the falsehood of the principle either. Is my failure to believe the logical consequences of all of my beliefs, a form of irrationality? If so, it is a very mild form. My failure to be disposed to form such beliefs seems even milder. By contrast, a Moorean believer is guilty of a severe irrationality.

9. THE MOOREAN ABSURDITY OF BELIEF IN THE I T E R AT E D C A S E S Is a belief in om1 or com1 Moorean as defined above? As an instance of om1 consider: It is raining but I don’t believe that I believe that it is raining. This is a possible truth that constitutes no irrationality in me. Suppose that I have no way of discovering the truth that it is raining because I have been incarcerated in a sealed room. Then I might reasonably withhold the belief that it is raining by suspending judgement either way, without mistakenly thinking that I believe that it is raining. As an instance of com1 , consider: It is raining but I believe that I believe that it is not raining. Again this is a possible truth that constitutes no irrationality in me. Suppose that while incarcerated, my captors fool me with the utterly convincing illusion of dry weather. Then I might be justified, not only in believing that it is not raining, but also in thinking that I hold this second-order belief. So whether belief in om1 and com1 is Moorean depends upon whether it is possible to be justified in holding such a belief. The Evans-inspired account vindicates the intuition that this is impossible. Take om1 first. Suppose for reductio that I am justified in believing that (it is raining but I do not believe that I believe that it is raining). By justification-distribution, I am justified in believing that I do not believe that I believe that it is raining. By the same principle, I am also justified in believing that it is raining. By a double application of Evans’s principle, it follows that I am justified in believing that I do believe that I believe that it is raining. Since this is impossible, I cannot be justified


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in believing that (it is raining but I don’t believe that I believe that it is raining).¹⁵ Now deal with com1 : Suppose for reductio that I am justified in believing that (it is raining but I believe that I believe that it is not raining). By justificationdistribution, I am justified in believing that I do believe that I believe that it is not raining. By the same principle, I am also justified in believing that it raining. By a double application of the analogue of Evans’s principle, it follows that I am justified in believing that I do not believe that I believe that I believe that it is not raining. Since this is impossible, I cannot be justified in believing that (it is raining but I believe that I believe that it is not raining).¹⁶ ¹⁵ Given JD) BJ (p & q) → (BJ p & BJ q) EP) BJ p → BJ Bp Rat)

BJ p → ∼ BJ ∼p

Impossibility of being justified in contradictory beliefs.

2. BJ p & BJ ∼BBp

1, JD.

1. BJ (p & ∼BBp) 3. BJ p J

4. B ∼BBp

2, &-elimination. 2, &-elimination. 3, EP.

6. BJ BBp

5, EP.

7. ∼BJ BBp

4, Rat.

J

9. ∼ ♦B (p & ∼BBp)

Rat)

Suppose for reductio.

5. BJ Bp

8. BJ BBp & ∼BJ BBp

¹⁶ Given JD) AEP)

Justification-distribution. Evans’s principle.

6, 7, &-introduction. Contradiction. 1, 8, Reductio ad absurdum.

BJ (p & q) → (BJ p & BJ q) BJ p → BJ ∼B∼p BJ p →∼ BJ ∼p

Justification-distribution. Analogue of Evans’s principle. Impossibility of being justified in contradictory beliefs.

DN) Double negation under the scope of belief operators may be eliminated. Suppose for reductio. 1. BJ (p & BB∼p) 2. BJ p & BJ BB∼p 1, JD. 3. BJ p

2, &-elimination.

4. BJ BB∼p

2, &-elimination.

5. BJ ∼B∼p

3, AEP.

7. BJ ∼BB∼p

6, DN.

6. BJ ∼B∼∼B∼p

5, AEP.

8. ∼BJ ∼BB∼p

4, Rat.

10. ∼ ♦BJ (p & BB∼p)

1, 9, Reductio ad absurdum.

9. BJ ∼BB∼p & ∼BJ ∼BB∼p

7, 8, &-introduction. Contradiction.

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Since both Evans’s principle and its analogue may be applied recursively, it follows that it is impossible to be justified in believing om4 or com4 . Indeed this holds for any iteration of belief operators. So a belief in any iteration of om or com is equally Moorean. But doesn’t this result contradict Sorensen’s observation that as iteration increases, omissive absurdity appears to decrease, while commissive type absurdity does not? In fact the contradiction is only apparent. To appreciate this, recall the point that I might believe that Singapore is democracy but fail to believe that it is either a democracy or a plutocracy because I have no idea what a plutocracy is. Having granted Searle’s principle, now suppose that my belief that I believe that it is raining is iterated in the following series: I believe that I believe that I believe that it is raining I believe that I believe that I believe that I believe that it is raining . . . and so on. Although I do not lose the concepts of rain, belief, or of myself as the series progresses, eventually the sheer complexity of the iteration will prevent any human being from thinking thoughts of it. The same complexity will eventually render me incapable of distinguishing any would-be nth -order beliefs from any would-be n−1th order belief. Moreover, it could be argued that this renders me unable to understand the content of either would-be belief. Now suppose, for the sake of argument, that the point at which I am first unable to think the relevant thought in the series is marked by the millionth iteration of the belief. Suppose also that I am justified in believing that it is raining. Consistently with Evans’s principle, I am still justified in holding a one-millionth-iterated belief that it is raining, but only in the counterfactual sense that if I could form such a belief then I would be justified in holding it. In that case it would be absurd of me to believe that It is raining but I don’t believe that I believe that . . . I believe that it is raining where the iteration is a million because I could not possibly enjoy justification for holding it. What explains the apparent absence of absurdity is an easily made confusion between the supposition that I hold such a belief and the supposition that I hold the different but non-absurd belief that It is raining but I don’t hold a one-millionth-iterated belief that it is raining. By contrast, I would be justified in holding such a belief, since I may sensibly recognize the fact that despite the rain, only God could form beliefs of such complexity. The abbreviated thought of a ‘one-millionth-iterated belief’ that we formed in considering the series above is not particularly complex, as opposed to the thought that we would have formed in actually holding a one-millionth iterated belief. So my inability to think one-millionth-iterated thoughts does not

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prevent me from thinking the thought of myself holding a belief that is iterated a million times. 1 0 . T H E A B S U R D I T Y O F M O O R E A N A S S E RT I O N When I make a Moorean assertion to you, no absurdity resides in your belief that my words are true. For you can quite sensibly believe that I am ignorant in a specific way or that I hold a specific mistaken belief. But my full intention in making an assertion to you is not simply to get you to believe my words. In attempting to inform or let you know that p, I intend to get you to know that p. When I lie to you that p, I intend to get you to mistakenly believe that p. In any such case I intend to get you to believe my words. But I cannot succeed in this attempt unless I also get you to think that I am sincere in making the assertion. For if you think that I’m play-acting or recognize that I’m lying, then you have no reason to accept my words, so my attempt to impart knowledge or lie to you will fail. Since I should see with minimal reflection that this is so, my full intention must be to get you to believe my words by getting you to think me sincere in uttering them. It follows that I must intend to get you to believe that I am sincerely telling the truth. We may call this the intention to ‘believe me’.¹⁷ When my assertion is Moorean, this aim is necessarily frustrated. It seems uncontroversial that Assertion distributes over conjunction: If I assert that (p and q) then I assert that p and I assert that q. For illustration, if I tell you that it is hot and humid then surely I tell you that it is hot and tell you that it is humid. So if I tell you that (p and I don’t believe that p) then I tell you that p. So in virtue of believing me sincere in asserting the first conjunct, you must think that I do believe that p. But by the same principle, I also tell you that I don’t believe that p. So in virtue of believing that I tell the truth in asserting the second conjunct, you must think that I do not believe that p. So you must have contradictory beliefs if you believe me. Now suppose that I make the commissive assertion to you that (p and I believe that not-p). Since assertion distributes over conjunction, I tell you that p. So in virtue of believing me sincere in asserting the first conjunct, you must again think that I believe that p. But I also tell you that I believe that not-p. So in virtue of believing that I tell the truth in asserting the second conjunct, you must think that I believe that not-p. So this time you must think that I have contradictory beliefs. ¹⁷ Although intuitions about what counts as ‘believing me’ are not robust, there is reason to think that taking it to constitute believing that I am a sincere truth-teller is not just a convenient stipulation. For if you don’t believe what I say then clearly you won’t believe me. Nor will you believe me, as opposed to merely believing my words, if you accept my words but know that I am merely parroting information or inadvertently telling the truth in an attempt to deceive you that has failed because I have got my facts wrong.

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This itself is no obstacle to your believing me. Perhaps you are prepared to acquire contradictory beliefs or ascribe them to me. But when I attempt to communicate with you by making an assertion, I should assume that we would both charitably avoid such ascriptions if possible. On this assumption I am in a position to see with minimal reflection that my plan to be believed, in other words to be thought a sincere truth-teller, is bound to fail. So it is practically irrational of me to go ahead and make the assertion. I admit that there are two types of assertion that do not fit the central account of assertion I have just given. For if I make either type of assertion to you, I do not aim to make you think I am sincerely telling the truth. The first case is when I say something to you just to ‘wind you up’. For example, suppose that I know that you think that North Korea has nuclear weapons, an opinion I in fact share. Nonetheless I insincerely state that it has no such weapons just to ‘rattle your cage’. Here my intention is to get you to believe that I am sincerely asserting a falsehood in order to keep you verbally opposed to my words. The second case arises when on learning that you have just discovered that I am a habitual liar, I decide to tell the truth for once. So when you ask me if the pubs are still open, I tell you the truth that they are, in order to deceive you into mistakenly thinking that they are not. Here my intention is to get you to believe that I am insincerely asserting a falsehood. Since I have explained the absurdity of Moorean assertion in terms of the central account, the objection arises that we may coin Moorean assertions of the two non-central types. Then the central account will not be able to explain the absurdity in terms of the assertor’s intention to be thought a sincere truth-teller. This is perfectly true. But my account of Moorean assertion still has the resources to explain the absurdity of ‘winding-up’ or ‘double-bluff ’ Moorean assertions. In the winding-up case, I can hardly hope to prolong verbal disagreement with you unless you think (mistakenly) that I’m sincere. But when my winding-up assertion is Moorean, I am in a position to see that you couldn’t take me to hold a Moorean belief unless you thought I was irrational. So although I could still irritate you by pretending to be mad, I could not sensibly try to annoy you by making you think that we are divided in opinion. In the second case, my intention in asserting that p is to get you to mistakenly believe that not-p. This means that I myself believe that p. But when my double-bluff assertion is Moorean, I cannot rationally believe what I assert. Moreover, my attempt to make you think me insincere is parasitic upon my expectation that you will normally think me sincere. This is precisely why it is a double-bluff. So the full description of such an assertion includes the fact that when I assert to you that p, I intend to get you to mistakenly believe that I’m insincere because I know that normally I will get you to think I am sincere. But when my double-bluff assertion is Moorean, I know no such thing, because there is no normal case in which I can sensibly try to make you think I hold a Moorean belief.

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My central analysis easily explains the absurdity of the Moorean assertions that we considered at the start. Suppose that you believe me when I tell you that I have no beliefs. In virtue of accepting my sincerity, you must believe that I have at least one belief, namely that in my own words. But in virtue of accepting the truth of what I say, you must also believe that I have no beliefs. So if you are to believe me then you must hold contradictory beliefs about my beliefs. Or suppose that you believe me when I tell you that God knows that I am not a theist. In virtue of accepting my sincerity, you must believe that I do believe that God exists. But in virtue of accepting the truth of what I say, you must also believe that I do not believe that God exists. So if you are to believe me then you must hold contradictory beliefs about my religious convictions. Finally, suppose that you believe me when I tell you that God knows that I am an atheist. In virtue of accepting my sincerity, you must believe that I believe that God exists. But in virtue of accepting the truth of what I say, you must also believe that I believe that God does not exist. So if you believe me this time then you must think that I hold contradictory beliefs about the existence of God. 1 1 . T H E D I F F E R E N T I A L A B S U R D I T Y O F A S S E RT I N G S O R E N S E N ’ S I T E R AT E D C A S E S I have argued that believing om1 or com1 is equally absurd as believing om or com. But asserting om1 or com1 does seem less absurd than asserting om or com. Moreover, as iteration increases, the absurdity of the omissive assertion does appear to decrease, unlike that of the commissive assertion. My account explains why this is so. As we saw, when I assert om to you, you can only believe me by sacrificing your own rationality in acquiring contradictory beliefs. You need not make this sacrifice in order to believe me when I assert om1 ) p & I don’t believe that I believe that p. Suppose that you do believe me. Since you think me sincere in asserting the first conjunct, you think that I believe that p. And since you believe what I say in the second conjunct, you think that I don’t believe that I believe that p. In other words, you must think that I have a belief that I don’t think I have. Since this involves no sacrifice of rationality on your part, I am correspondingly more credible. I also become more credible when I assert com1 instead of com. As we saw, when I assert com to you, you can only believe me by thinking that I hold contradictory beliefs. This is a harsher judgment than the one you must pass on me if you believe me when I assert com1 ) p & I believe that I believe that not-p. Suppose that you do believe me. Then since you think me sincere in asserting the first conjunct, you think that I believe that p. And since you believe what I say in

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the second conjunct, you think that I believe that I believe that not-p. So if you are to believe me, you must judge that I really hold a belief that contradicts what I think I believe. Given your charity in withholding the judgement that I have contradictory beliefs, you may only make the criticism that I hold a mistaken belief about what I believe. This seems a milder criticism than the charge that I hold contradictory beliefs. Given that I am more credible when charity demands a lesser criticism, I am more credible in asserting com1 than in asserting com. The absurdity of omissive assertion decreases as iteration increases. That I fail to have a one-millionth-iterated belief in what I really do believe is perfectly credible, since neither you nor I can humanly hold such beliefs. My assertion becomes a truthful report of psychological limits. By contrast, my credibility in making commissive assertions is not strengthened by further iteration. Your judgement that I have a belief that contradicts what I take myself (over a million iterations) to believe should be that I am still at fault to the same degree. My iterated belief still commits me to a belief that is iterated one order less, and so on back down the series until I am committed to contradictory beliefs. If you believe me when I assert (com1,00,000 ), you are still in a position to see that I can avoid contradictory beliefs only if, somewhere in the series, I take myself to have a belief that I don’t in fact have. REFERENCES Audi, R. (1994), ‘Dispositional Beliefs and Dispositions to Believe’, Noûs, 28/4: 419–434. Evans, G. (1982), The Varieties of Reference (New York: Oxford University Press). Moore, G. E. (1944), ‘Russell’s Theory of Descriptions’, in P. Schlipp, The Philosophy of Bertrand Russell (Evanston, Ill.: Tudor), 175–225. (1942), ‘A Reply to My Critics’, in P. Schlipp (ed.), The Philosophy of G. E. Moore (Evanston, Ill.: Tudor), 535–677. Searle, J. (1992), The Rediscovery of the Mind (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press). Sorensen, R. A. (1988), Blindspots (Oxford: Clarendon Press). (2000), ‘Moore’s Problem with Iterated Belief ’, Philosophical Quarterly, 50/198: 28–43. Stalnaker, R. (1975), ‘Indicative Conditionals’, Philosophia, 75/5: 269–86. (1984), Inquiry (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press). Vahid, H. (2005), ‘Moore’s Paradox and Evans’s Principle: A Reply to Williams’, Analysis, 65/4: 337–41. Williams, J. N. (2004), ‘Moore’s Paradoxes, Evans’s Principle and Self-Knowledge’, Analysis, 64/4: 348–53. (2006), ‘In Defence of an Argument for Evans’s Principle: A Rejoinder to Vahid’, Analysis, 66/2: 167–70.


PART I I I M O O R E ’ S PA R A D OX , B E L I E F, A N D A S S E RT I O N


6 What Reflexive Pronouns Tell Us about Belief: A New Moore’s Paradox De Se, Rationality, and Privileged Access Jay David Atlas

I . S O M E T H I R D - PE R S O N , LO G I C O - L I N G U I S T I C O B S E RVAT I O N S : QU I N E , G E AC H , E T A L . Quine (1960) raised questions in the 1940s about the referential occurrences of singular terms in lower clauses in third-person, present tense, indicative sentences that contain intentional verbs, e.g. ‘believes’. In sentence (1) John believes that Gray Davis was re-elected governor of California. Quine distinguished between a ‘‘notional sense’’ of ‘believes’ and a ‘‘relational sense’’ of ‘believes’. For the notional sense he considered several paraphrases: a propositional attitude, understood first as a two-place relation between John and an intension, (2a), a relation between John and a paraphrase of the lower clause by an eternal sentence, (2b), a three-place relation between John and an eternal sentence in the belief-ascriber’s idiolect, (2c), and, finally, a predicate (a general The first version of this paper was presented to the Colloquium, Department of Philosophy, California State University, Northridge, April 30, 2003, under the title ‘‘The Language of FirstPerson Belief: Grammar and Privileged Access.’’ A later, shortened version was presented to the Institute for Cognitive Science, State University of New York at Buffalo, November 17, 2004. I am grateful to Takashi Yagisawa, Gregory Trianosky, and to their colleagues at CSUN for comments and stimulating discussion, and to the audience at the University of Buffalo for the same. In particular I am indebted to Elisabeth Camp, Martin Hackl, John Kearns, Jean-Pierre Koenig, Gail Mauner, William J. Rapaport, David Rosenthal, Peter Ross, Erwin Segal, Stuart Shapiro, John Williams, and Richard Zubin for comments, and to Norton Starr, Dan Velleman, Alexander George, Jonathan Vogel, William B. Starr, Robert and Phyllis Sleigh, and Edmund Gettier of the Department of Mathematics and the Department of Philosophy, Amherst College, and of the Department of Philosophy, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, for their hospitality—intellectual and institutional—during the Fall Semester, 2004–5.

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term) true of John, (2d). Quine expressed the relational sense of ‘believes’ as a three-place relation among John, the attribute of being re-elected governor of California, and Gray Davis in (3). The relational senses allow quantification on the occurrence of ‘Gray Davis’ in the lower clause of (1), as in (4), while (2a), (2b), (2c), and (2d) do not. (2) a. b.

John believes [Gray Davis was re-elected governor of California]. John believes-true ‘Gray Davis is re-elected governor of California at time to ’ c. John believes-true ‘Gray Davis . . .’ in z’s idiolect. (z is the asserter of the sentence) d. John believes-that-Gray-Davis-was-elected-governor-ofCalifornia. (3) John believes x[x was re-elected governor of California] of Gray Davis. (4) ∃y (John believes x[x was re-elected governor of California] of y).

These observations generated and continue to generate a vast and sophisticated philosophical enterprise—the semantic analysis of belief attributions, or the ‘‘logic’’ of ‘believes’ sentences. Beginning in the late 1950s Peter Geach (1957, 1972), Hector-Neri Castañeda (1966), and Arthur Prior (1967), followed by David K. Lewis (1979a), and John Perry (1977), made linguistic observations that raised quite different issues, semantically ill-understood but having more direct connections with traditional problems in metaphysics and the philosophy of mind. Suppose we alter example (1) so that the singular term is the same in subject position in the higher as in the lower clause, e.g. (5a) for co-referring proper names, or so that the singular terms are co-referring, e.g. the anaphoric ‘he’ in (5b) and the definite description ‘the man whom every California state legislator dislikes’ in (5c). What Geach and Castañeda noticed was that an indirect (5) a. Gray Davis believes that Gray Davis was re-elected governor of California. b. Gray Davis believes that he was re-elected governor of California. c. Gray Davis believes that the man whom every California state legislator dislikes was re-elected governor of California. reflexive pronoun ‘he himself ’ could be inserted in subject position in the lower clause of (5b) to produce (6a), with a constraining effect on interpretation. The indirect reflexive pronoun creates a predicate the natural interpretation of which is a one-place predicate of x in (6b), allowing binding by existential and universal quantifiers in (6c) and (6d). The force of the indirect reflexive pronoun can be approximately paraphrased in direct discourse in (6e).

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(6) a.

Gray Davis believes that he himself was re-elected governor of California. b. x believes that he himself was re-elected governor of California. c. Someone believes that he himself was re-elected governor of California. d. Everyone believes that he himself was re-elected governor of California. e. Gray Davis believes, ‘‘I was re-elected governor of California.’’ What was not discussed by these philosophers, unsurprisingly, was the reflexive pronoun/proper name case, produced by inserting ‘himself ’ in the subject of the lower clause of (5a): f. Gray Davis believes that Gray Davis himself was re-elected governor of California, for there cannot be a proposition believed by Gray Davis that has the content literally expressed by: g. . The sentence-string ‘*Gray Davis himself was re-elected governor of California’ is ungrammatical; so it cannot literally express a propositional content.¹ The sentences in (5) possess, of course, their usual, relational, co-referential interpretations in (7a,b,c). (7) a. Gray Davis believes, of Gray Davisi , that hei was re-elected governor of California. b. Gray Davis believes, of Gray Davis, i.e. of himself, that he was re-elected governor of California. c. Gray Davis believes, of the man that every California state legislator dislikes, that he was re-elected governor of California. d. Gray Davis believes [Gray Davis was re-elected governor of California]. e. Gray Davis believes [he was re-elected governor of California]. What is logically interesting is that the de se ascription (6a) Gray Davis believes that he himself was re-elected governor of California entails the co-referential de re ascription (7a), but not conversely. Moreover, the de se ascription (6a) Gray Davis believes that he himself was re-elected governor of California neither entails ¹ Even worse grammaticality problems will afflict the corresponding sentence for (5c), since the resulting belief-sentences are themselves ungrammatical: *Gray Davis believes that the man himself whom every California state legislator dislikes was re-elected governor of California, or: *Gray Davis believes that the man whom every California state legislator dislikes himself was re-elected governor of California. Similar constraints on the grammaticality of first-person sentences will be discussed below in (11), where I discuss cases of stress on ‘myself ’. Stress can make the utterance-type ‘‘Gray Davis HIMSELF was re-elected governor of California’’ seem linguistically acceptable.

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nor is entailed by the de dicto interpretations of the ascriptions (5a) Gray Davis believes that Gray Davis was re-elected governor of California, (5c) Gray Davis believes that the man whom every California state legislator dislikes was re-elected governor of California. This is clear when Gray Davis does not believe that ‘Gray Davis’ denotes him, e.g. he has forgotten his name, or when he does not believe that ‘the man whom every California state legislator dislikes’ denotes him. Thus the de dicto and de se ascriptions are logically independent, and the de se ascriptions entail the de re ascriptions but are not logically equivalent to de re or to de dicto, non-pronominal counterparts. (I am indebted here to the illuminating work of Boër and Lycan (1986), though they fail to consider the pronoun case (5b).) The case of the pronoun ‘he’, the case ignored by Boër and Lycan, is more interesting. The pronoun ‘he’ may be anaphoric, syntactically co-indexed with its antecedent Noun Phrase, or it may not be anaphoric. Correspondingly, of (5b) we can get two de re interpretations, one of which is the non-coreferential Gray Davisi believes, of himj , that hej was re-elected governor of California and the other of which is the coreferential (7b) Gray Davisi believes, of himi —that is, of himself—that hei was re-elected governor of California; the de se (6a) Gray Davis believes that he himself was re-elected governor of California entails the de re (7b) Gray Davis believes, of himself, that he was re-elected governor of California. How shall we construe a de dicto interpretation of (5b) Gray Davis believes that he was re-elected governor of California? There are two possible dicta; the first is the non-anaphoric, non-coreferential [hej was re-elected governor of California], and the second is the anaphoric, coreferential [hei was re-elected governor of California]. When Russellian propositional attitudes were thought of as relations between persons and the intensions of Quine’s eternal sentences, there was always the lurking problem of ‘‘which eternal sentence?’’ But one presupposed that what was meant, by the sentence or by the speaker, was one proposition or eternalsentence-meaning. One simply would have concluded that the interpretation appropriate to (5b) depended on the analysis of the pronoun ‘he’ in the lower clause of the sentence uttered by the speaker. How shall we represent the dictum in (5b) that Gray Davis would be said to believe? Here are some choices (8b-e), depending on how one construes the pronoun ‘he’ in (5b), repeated in (8a). (8) a. He was re-elected governor of California. bi . He who is identical to Gray Davis was re-elected governor of California. bj . He who is not identical to Gray Davis was re-elected governor of California. c. The male person was re-elected governor of California.

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ci .

The male person who is identical to Gray Davis was re-elected governor . . . cj . The male person who is not identical to Gray Davis was re-elected governor . . . d. The unique male person was re-elected governor of California.² di . The unique male person who is identical to Gray Davis was re-elected governor . . . dj . The unique male person who is not identical to Gray Davis was re-elected . . . e. Gray Davis was re-elected governor of California. We eliminate (8d) if truth-values are to be assigned correctly. One may simplify the problem by removing the non-coreferential cases (8bj , cj , dj ). That leaves the remaining (8b’s), (8c’s), and (8e). Still, if a philosopher or a linguist asks me ‘‘what Gray Davis is said to believe’’ by one who asserts sentence (5b) Gray Davis believes that he was re-elected governor of California, my choice seems not a matter of clear linguistic intuition; it seems as much a matter of one’s theory of pronouns. Not even the appealingly simple (8e) Gray Davis was re-elected governor of California is necessarily the correct answer to what is intended by a de dicto ascription of (5b). Interpretation (8e) would result from treating ‘he’ as a ‘‘pronoun of laziness,’’ one that merely goes proxy for an occurrence of the earlier Noun ‘Gray Davis’, and not as an anaphoric pronoun; in that case the dictum of (5b) would be the same as the dictum of (5a) Gray Davis believes that Gray Davis was re-elected governor of California. But it does not seem right to ignore the difference between anaphoric pronouns and pronouns of laziness in the expressions of objects of belief, unless, of course, one has a theoretical reason to do so.³ After all these complexities, if the question is what did the speaker—the asserter—of (8a)/(5b) mean in his ascription of a belief-content to Gray Davis, a unique, determinate, distinctive answer (i.e. an answer different from (5a)) seems even less obvious.

² I do not assume that the determiner ‘the’ semantically requires uniqueness. So I distinguish between ‘the N’ and ‘the only N’ in (8c) and (8d). ³ Those who take the dicta to be propositions, and singular propositions in particular, would, of course, say that it does seem right that (5a) and (5b), if ‘he’ is an anaphoric pronoun, express a belief -relation between Gray Davis and the same proposition. On that interpretation (5a) and (5b) ascribe the same belief-content to Gray Davis. The singular proposition theorist asks: Why should not pronouns of laziness and anaphoric pronouns coincidentally yield the same proposition as the object of belief ? One tends to answer, rather simple-mindedly one fears: the propositional concepts expressed by the pronoun and by the proper name sentences would seem to be different. Why should not these different linguistic entities express different ways of believing or different objects of belief in the mind of Gray Davis?

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I I . S O M E F I R S T- PE R S O N , LO G I C O - L I N G U I S T I C O B S E RVAT I O N S The permutations of first-person and third-person in (9) are all grammatical, but the permutations in the de se (10) are not. By contrast with the grammatical (10a) I believe that I myself was re-elected governor of California, in sentence (10c) *John believes that I myself was re-elected governor of California the indirect, first-person reflexive pronoun in the lower clause cannot grammatically co-occur with a non-first-person higher subject Noun Phrase, even if there are speakers named ‘John’ who might utter the ungrammatical (10c) with a semantic interpretation identical to that of an utterance of the grammatical (10a). The grammaticality of the English sentence cannot depend on the existence of speakers named ‘John’—a point reminiscent of a view of Wittgenstein’s in the Tractatus LogicoPhilosophicus. This way of contrasting (10a) and (10c) treats them respectively as grammatical and ungrammatical sentence-strings. (9) a. I believe that I was re-elected governor of California. b. John believes that John was re-elected governor of California. c. John believes that I was re-elected governor of California. d. I believe that John was re-elected governor of California. (10) a. I believe that I myself was re-elected governor of California. b. John believes that he himself was re-elected governor of John California. c. *John believes that I myself was re-elected governor of California. d. *I believe that he himself was re-elected governor of California. e. *I believe that John himself was re-elected governor of California. Sentence (10d) is manifestly ungrammatical. The Proper Name cases (10c) and (10e) are more interesting. A more tolerant theory of the set of grammatical sentence-strings might un-star (10c) on the grounds that there is some acceptable interpretation of some utterance-type —not just of a nonce utterance-token—of the sentence-string, a case of which I shall discuss below. Such tolerant criteria would admit as grammatical various ungrammatical or semantically anomalous Malapropisms, e.g. ‘It’s a ten-hour receptacle’ (from ‘It’s a ten-hour spectacle’), and ungrammatical Spoonerisms, e.g. ‘Cicero denounced the sat old fenator’ (from ‘Cicero denounced the fat old senator’). The unexpected, verbal pleasure of

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many Spoonerisms depends on its being only an amusing accident that the result is grammatical and meaningful: Prince Albert kissed the dear old Queen becomes Prince Albert kissed the queer old Dean. Narrower, less tolerant criteria force us to accept the possibility that ungrammatical sentences like (10c) could have an acceptable interpretation of its utterance-type. I shall return to this possibility below. Sometimes speakers do not notice the difference between the stressed and unstressed statements without having the stress brought to their attention, but the indirect, first-person reflexive pronoun cannot occur acceptably in an independent clause unless the reflexive pronoun is contrastively stressed; compare (11a) with (11b). (11) a. *I myself was re-elected governor of California.⁴ b. I MYSELF was re-elected governor of California. c. Myself, I was re-elected governor of California. If identity criteria for sentences include phonological information on stress and intonation, then (11a) and (11b) are distinct sentences. We can then mark (11a) as an ungrammatical sentence and (11b) as a grammatical sentence—as I have done above. If identity criteria for sentences are not so formulated, then we should treat (11a) and (11b) as distinct utterance-types of one sentence-type generated by the grammar (a ‘‘system-sentence’’), and the strings in (11a,b) should be double-quoted as unacceptable and acceptable utterance-types: ‘‘? I myself was re-elected governor of California’’, ‘‘I MYSELF was re-elected governor ⁴ Castañeda (1966: 151–4) has a splendid discussion of the ungrammaticality of ‘He himself is F’ and of ‘He himself is a’, the conclusion of which is: (H*1) The pronoun ‘he*’ [‘he himself ’] is strictly a subordinate pronoun: it is by itself an incomplete, or syncategorematic, symbol, and every sentence or clause containing a tokenw [i.e. token in the wide sense, allowing related grammatical forms, e.g. ‘him’] of ‘he*’ which is not in oratio obliqua, is also an incomplete or syncategorematic sentence or clause. (1966: 154) One charming part of this discussion I cannot resist quoting, with some change in notation, though I shall resist the temptation to give a critical gloss of it here: Doubtless, in the sentence ‘a believes that he himself is F’ the token of ‘he himself ’ does refer to the person a. This suggests both that we could have statements of the form ‘‘he himself is a’’ and that whoever believed or asserted ‘‘a believes that he himself is F’’ should certainly know the truth of the corresponding statement ‘‘he himself is a.’’ It would seem, then, that tokens of ‘he himself ’ can appear in oratio recta. However, if there were complete statements of the form ‘‘he himself is a’’, these statements could be known to be true by the person a himself. But suppose that a, who does not know that he himself is a, does assert (or just thinks, for that matter) ‘‘a believes that he himself is F.’’ That is, a could come to know that he himself is a simply by thinking that the man a has some property or other. For instance, the heaviest man in Europe could come to know that he himself weighs more than anybody else without resorting at all to scales and comparison of weights!This absurdity arises simply from allowing the tokensw of ‘he*’ to function as independent symbols, i.e., as referring devices in their own right, without the need of a grammatical and logical antecedent. Hence, we must conclude that there are no complete statements of the form ‘‘he* is a.’’ That is, a sentence containing a tokenw of ‘he*’ can, given ordinary meanings, formulate a statement only if the tokenw in question has an antecedent in the same sentence. (1966: 151–2)

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of California’’.⁵ The question is now, is the one sentence-string in (11a,b) grammatical or ungrammatical? One answer is that, since the string has one acceptable, phonological realization in (11b), the sentence-string I myself was re-elected governor of California is grammatical. Another answer is that, since the string has one unacceptable, phonological realization in (11a), the sentence-string I myself was re-elected governor of California is ungrammatical. If the sentence-string is ungrammatical in (11a,b), by contrasting it with the grammatical sentence in (10a) I believe that I myself was re-elected governor of California, we can formulate the question: why is the complement clause part of a grammatical sentence in (10a), but if it stands alone as a sentence in (11a), it is ungrammatical? First-person reflexives in lower clauses occur grammatically, but first-person reflexives in highest clauses do not occur grammatically. If the sentence-string is grammatical in (11a,b), no such syntactical question is formulable. The data would have to be described as follows: a grammatical string (11a,b) embeds grammatically in a higher ‘I believe . . .’; an utterancetype ‘‘I MYSELF . . .’’ of the same string embeds acceptably in an utterance ‘‘I believe . . .’’ of a higher ‘I believe . . .’ sentence: ‘‘I believe that I MYSELF was re-elected governor of California’’, and an unacceptable utterance-type ‘‘? I myself was re-elected governor of California’’ of a grammatical string ‘I myself was re-elected governor of California’ embeds in an acceptable utterance ‘‘I believe that I myself was re-elected governor of California’’ of a higher, grammatical ‘I believe . . .’ sentence. This description of the data has the oddity that a grammatical string, when uttered naturally (the ‘‘unmarked’’ case), is an unacceptable utterance but when uttered with ‘‘unnatural’’ stress (the ‘‘marked’’ case) is an acceptable utterance. One also would wonder why it is that prefacing an unacceptable utterance with an acceptable utterance of ‘‘I believe . . .’’ should make the unacceptable utterance-type acceptable. Contrasting the preceding two paragraphs, with their two distinct formulations of the data, one understands why one might prefer, for clarity and coherence, the first of the two. Moreover, as (11c) shows, a first-person sentence with a left-dislocated first-person, reflexive pronoun is grammatical; (11c) exhibits a syntactical means of accomplishing in a sentence what stress accomplishes in the utterance-type (11b). (Utterances of the sentence (11c), with normal stress and intonation, are perfectly acceptable, of course.) But then one must note a distinction between the forms of the sentences in (11a,b) and (11c). The first is ungrammatical; the second is grammatical. In Quine’s relational sense of (1) John believes that Gray Davis was reelected governor of California, viz. (3) John believes x[x was re-elected governor of California] of Gray Davis, ‘John’ and ‘Gray Davis’ occur transparently in a ⁵ For more on the difference that contrastive stress can make, see Atlas and Levinson’s (1981: 16–18) discussion of the difference in Noun Phrase focus of simple declarative and cleft statements.

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three-place ‘believes’ predicate that is true or false of <John, Gray Davis, x[x was re-elected governor of California]>. (12) a. I believe of myself that I was re-elected governor of California. b. *I believe of myself that he was re-elected governor of California. c. *I believe of myself that John was re-elected governor of California. d. I believe of John that he was re-elected governor of California. e. *I believe of John that I was re-elected governor of California. A first-person, subject Noun Phrase case would be (12a), where ‘I’ and ‘myself’ occur transparently in a three-place ‘believes’ predicate true or false of . There are some sentences that are manifestly ungrammatical, e.g. (12b), even if a speaker named ‘John’ who asserts (12c) or (12e) would assert an ungrammatical sentence-token whose assertion nonetheless would generate an accommodated inference that I (the speaker) am identical to John.⁶ For the reasons discussed earlier in this section, the Proper Name sentences (12c) and (12e) are best regarded as ungrammatical even though they possess accommodated utteranceinterpretations for tokens of them uttered by a speaker named ‘John’. The alternative is to think of them as grammatical sentence-types because there exist such interpretable utterance-tokens; I have rejected that option earlier in this section.⁷ ⁶ I use ‘accommodate’ in the technical sense of ‘presuppose in order to make possible an interpretation of an infelicitous or ungrammatical assertion’. See Lewis (1979b); Atlas (2004, 2005). ⁷ Castañeda (1966: 146–7) mentions cases of non-anaphoric, referential occurrences of ‘me’ with a non-first-person subject: Johni believes of me j that I j am F, where he takes ‘I’ to be merely a syntactic artifact, dependent for its interpretation on ‘me’, and cases of non-anaphoric uses of ‘I’ in the lower ‘believes’ clause (where there cannot be co-reference with the subject NP): Johni believes that I j am F, the latter of which he calls ‘directly self-referring uses of ‘I’ ’ that refer to the speaker of the sentence, as in (9c). Oddly enough, he does not consider the first-person subject cases. He also never mentions the ‘I myself ’ case of (10a), whether the subject NP is first-person or not. He does say of the two sentences that he mentions that ‘‘ . . . the difference . . . is very intriguing. But we do not have to dwell upon it here. We need note only that it lies in the claim’’ made by the latter sentence, but not the former, that John has a way of referring to the speaker of the sentence that enables John to ‘‘pick out’’ or ‘‘identify’’ the speaker as the individual whom John believes to be F (Castañeda 1966: 150). Or to put it slightly differently, Johni believes that I j am F ‘‘makes the claim’’ that John knows who the speaker is, while the de re, ‘of me’ version does not. Castañeda’s intuition about the use and implications of the former sentence makes the sentence with the directly self-referring use of ‘I’ a semantical hybrid: in some sense it is both de dicto and de re. Castañeda interprets the sentence to express a relation between John and a content expressible by , for some , where ‘’ ranges over identifying referring expressions by which John picks out the speaker, who in uttering the sentence refers to himself by ‘I’. This was an insight into the semantics of the indexical ‘I’. By contrast with the intended de re sentence Johni believes of me j that I j am F, there is surely something to Castañeda’s intuition that the speaker conversationally implicates that John knows who he or she is in asserting Johni believes that I j am F. The question is whether it is more than a conversational implicature, whether, as Castañeda seems to have intended, it is entailed. I believe that it is a conversational implicature, but I shall not argue the point here.

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I I I . S E N T E N C E - T Y PE S V E R S U S U T T E R A N C E - T Y PE S The distinction between sentence-types and utterance-types (see Atlas 1989; Bach 1987; Levinson 1995) has not been given sufficient attention in these cases, since philosophers of language and linguists have not examined carefully the mixed cases of third-person and first-person, where the distinction becomes particularly useful. Like the grammatical sentences in (9), the utterances in (13a) are acceptable. Like the ungrammatical sentence (10c), the sentence in (13b) is ungrammatical, but the utterance of (13b) can receive an acceptable, ‘‘accommodated’’ interpretation. A hearer can put an acceptable interpretation on the utterance if he ‘‘accommodates’’ the co-extensiveness of ‘I myself’ and ‘Gray Davis’ in the speaker’s utterance of (13b); he infers what would make the utterance acceptable, viz. that the speaker must be Gray Davis. Like Richard Nixon, during his Presidency, referring to himself by tokens of ‘the President’, Gray Davis can utter tokens of (13b) in which the tokens of ‘Gray Davis’ and ‘I myself’ are co-extensive. Likewise, the tokens of ‘myself’ and ‘Gray Davis’ are accommodated by the hearer to be co-extensive in tokens of (13c), if the utterance of the ungrammatical sentence is to have an acceptable interpretation. (13) a. ‘‘Gray Davis believes that Gray Davis was re-elected governor . . .’’ ‘‘Gray Davis believes that I was re-elected governor . . .’’ ‘‘I believe that Gray Davis was re-elected governor . . .’’ b. ‘‘*Gray Davis believes that I myself was re-elected governor of California.’’ c. ‘‘*I believe of Gray Davis was re-elected myself that governor of California.’’ Recall that the logical relationships of the third-person cases were as follows: the de se ascription (6a) Gray Davis believes that he himself was re-elected governor of California entails the de re ascription (7a) Gray Davis believes of Gray Davisi that hei was re-elected governor of California, but not conversely.⁸ The de dicto ascription (5a) Gray Davis believes that Gray Davis was re-elected governor of California and de se ascription (6a) Gray Davis believes that he himself was re-elected governor of California are logically independent.⁹ ⁸ The latter claim was also made by Castañeda (1966: 139–40). ⁹ This claim was also made by Castañeda (1966: 135).

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What about the first-person cases in (9a, 10a, 12a)? If the logical relationships were analogous to the third-person cases, the de se self-ascription (10a) I believe that I myself was re-elected governor of California would entail the de re selfascription (12a) I believe of myself i that I i was re-elected governor of California, but not conversely, and the seemingly de dicto self-ascription (9a) I believe that I was re-elected governor of California would be logically independent of the de se self-ascription (10a) I believe that I myself was re-elected governor of California. In fact, like the third-person case, the de se (10a) entails the de re (12a), and not conversely. But, as a matter of linguistic fact, the utterance-type of sentence (9a) I believe that I was re-elected governor of California itself has two natural interpretations, a de se interpretation in which the self-ascribed belief-content must be expressed in the first-person, viz. ¹⁰ and a de re interpretation in which the self-ascribed belief-content need not be expressed in the first-person, e.g. .¹¹ What is peculiar about the first-person utterance of sentence (9a) is that there is no de dicto interpretation; the natural interpretation is the de se interpretation. What is also peculiar to the first-person utterance is that there is a de re interpretation I believe of myself that I was re-elected governor of California the content of which could be expressed or mentally represented objectively rather than subjectively, using a first-person, singular pronoun ‘I’ that is referentially dependent on ‘myself’, in .¹² What is notable about the first-person utterance of sentence (9a), then, is this: unlike the third-person case there is no independent de dicto interpretation of the first-person utterance of (9a). I summarize these observations in (14a) and (14b). ¹⁰ For example, a question to Gray Davis: ‘‘What do you believe?’’; answer: ‘‘That I was re-elected governor of California’’. ¹¹ How one should analyze this de re interpretation, whether it should be an expression in a Fodorian Language of Thought, or whether it is a Russellian singular proposition containing in the ordered-pair Gray Davis and the predicate, or perhaps the property expressed by the predicate, is an interesting question. The simple, unadorned Russellian singular proposition cannot distinguish between these two de re and de se interpretations, so it is not a useful semantic entity for this analysis. One would need at least what I shall call a three-place Braunian singular proposition expressed by the lower clause of a ‘believes’ utterance U in a context K(U), , where ‘K(U)’ denotes a conversational context in which the sentence-token U is uttered. By the way, this is not Braun’s formalism; it is just my shorthand way of making use of his ‘‘ways of believing’’ a singular proposition. See David Braun (1998, 2002). Braun does claim that proper names are substitutable salva significatione in belief attributions, but that definite descriptions are not. ¹² What I mean by an objective use of ‘I’ is a referential use dependent on ‘myself ’ in phrases like ‘of myself ’, ‘I hurt myself ’, ‘I kicked myself for forgetting his birthday’. Some philosophers, linguists, as well as ordinary speakers, have trouble with the notion that a de re interpretation could be expressed using ‘I’. I believe that their difficulty is an effect of failing to notice the objective use of ‘I’. A conclusion of this paper concerning privileged access—my answer to the question whether < Bp → BBp> is correct—does not depend solely on the availability of this interpretation; the conclusion will still follow from my observations on the de se interpretation. See n. 31.


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The utterance-type ‘‘I believe that I was re-elected governor of California’’ has two interpretations, (i) the de se and (ii) the de re: i. I believe that I myself was re-elected governor of California. ii. I believe of myselfi that Ii was re-elected governor of California. (That is: I believe, of x, that x was re-elected governor of California, where x = the speaker of the utterance-token, the extension of the utterance’s token ‘I’.) b. The de se interpretation of (9a) entails the de re interpretation of (9a); there is no de dicto interpretation of the utterance-type (9a). So, in particular, uttered by Gray Davis, an utterance of (9a) I believe that I was re-elected governor of California actually expresses the essentially first-person de se (15(i) ) or a de re (15(ii) ), where I have refined in (15(ii) ) the de re paraphrase given in (14a(ii) ). (15) Gray Davis asserts a token of I believe that I was re-elected governor of California. Gray Davis makes a de se assertion, or a de re assertion, reported by: i. G.D. believes . ii. G.D. believes of G.D., i.e. of himself, the property x[x was re-elected governor of California]. It is a linguistically natural assumption to make in interpreting the utterance-type that there exists a genuine, de se interpretation in which the belief-content must be expressed using the first-person, singular pronoun. This intuition leads immediately to the question: what does it mean to attribute a belief-content that is essentially expressed in the first-person? (14)

a.

I V. M O O R E ’ S PA R A D OX , PE R S PE C T I V E O N T H E S E L F, AND RICHARD MORAN In order to shed some light on those questions, let us consider the conjunction (16) that contains (9a): (16) I believe that I was re-elected governor of California, but I was not. It will be granted that (16) resembles a peculiar utterance-type, of a sort made famous by Cambridge University philosopher G. E. Moore in the 1940s.¹³ But ¹³ Two of the forms of Moore sentences are the familiar examples in (a,b), schematized in (c,d). a. It’s raining, but I do not believe it. b. I believe that it’s raining, but it is not.

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first, let us note that (16) will have the de se and de re interpretations in (17a) and (17b). Approximate logical forms for (17) are given in (18). (17) a. I believe that I myself was re-elected governor of California, but I was not. b. I believe of myself that I was re-elected governor of California, but I was not.¹⁴ (18) a. B(I, ) ∧ ¬ RI b. BEL (I, myself, x [x was re-elected governor of California] ) ∧ ¬x [x was re-elected governor of California] (Imyself ) Let’s consider an English paraphrase of the de re (17b) in (19). The typical linguistic oddity of the Moore Paradox sentence does not appear!Compare (19) with a traditional G. E. Moore utterance (20), which certainly seems linguistically odd. By contrast, the de re utterance (19) just sounds like a psychiatric patient reporting a persistent but acknowledged delusion, and it is not linguistically odd.¹⁵ The de se interpretation (21b) of (16)—repeated as (21a)—on the other hand, sounds distinctly odd, after the Moore’s Paradox fashion, but it doesn’t c. P ∧ ¬BI [P] d. BI [P]∧¬ P How exactly to describe what is paradoxical in asserting sentences of these forms is up for discussion, but one observes that the assertion of a sentence of these forms certainly seems linguistically peculiar. Moore (1993: 207) himself thought that ‘‘it’s perfectly absurd or nonsensical to say such things’’. By ‘say’ he meant ‘utter a sentence assertively’. The logician C. H. Langford (1942/1968: 333) said that the assertion ‘‘sounds self-contradictory.’’ The linguist George Lakoff (1975: 264–5) thinks the assertion ‘‘sounds odd’’, as does John Searle (1983: 9). Linguists and philosophers have offered various explanations for this oddity. Wittgenstein (1974: 177) wrote to Moore in October 1944, just after hearing a discussion by Moore of the paradox at a meeting of the Moral Sciences Club in Cambridge, ‘‘You have said something about the logic of assertion . . . [that] it makes no sense to assert ‘p is the case and I don’t believe that p is the case’. This assertion has to be ruled out . . . just as a contradiction is.’’ Wittgenstein thinks that the Moore statements are an ‘‘ ‘absurdity’ which is in fact something similar to a contradiction, though it isn’t one . . .’’. Some speakers believe that the past-tense form of the content-clause in (16), as contrasted with the future or past-tense forms of the ‘believe’ verb, which admittedly block the assertoric oddity of the utterance of the Moore sentence, mislead the ear and make my examples sound more acceptable than they should sound. So, in addition to (16), we shall look at sentences like (16′ ) I believe that I am the governor-elect of California, but I am not. Nonetheless, I am on the side of historical tradition in my example (16); see my discussion of C. H. Langford and A. M. MacIver in Sec. VII, below. ¹⁴ (17′ ) a. I believe that I myself am governor-elect of California, but I am not. b. I believe of myself that I am governor-elect of California, but I am not. ¹⁵ Philosopher Greg Trianosky has confirmed my interpretation of this linguistic datum; he reports that, during a Medical Ethics Workshop at the University of Texas, Houston Medical Center, he observed psychiatric patients saying things of just this sort. Psycho-linguist Gail Mauner has also pointed out to me that John Nash reports his deluded mental states in the same way; see Sylvia Nasar, A Beautiful Mind (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1998). The first-personness of the lower clause in (19) makes it much easier, for me, linguistically to accept (19) than to accept (20), which does not have a first-person lower clause. Psychologist Richard Zubin has commented to me that if (19) were uttered acceptably by a deluded patient, so would (20) be. Zubin took this claim to be a reductio argument against my view of (19). But Zubin is ignoring the linguistic differences between the pronominal (19) and the non-pronominal (20).


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have the form of a Moore’s Paradox sentence < BI [P] ∧ ¬ P> , which would be the ungrammatical (21c), ungrammatical because of the ungrammatical, second conjunct. (19) I believe myself to have been re-elected governor of California, but I was not.¹⁶ ? I believe it’s raining, but it isn’t. (20) (21) a. I believe that I was re-elected governor of California, but I was not. [16] ? b. I believe that I myself was re-elected governor of California, but I was not. c. *I believe that I myself was re-elected governor of California, but I myself was not.¹⁷ Thus one form of a standard Moore’s Paradox sentence, where the content-clause is cast in the first-person, has a natural de re interpretation (19) but an odd de se interpretation (21b). The problem is that the odd de se interpretation is not an interpretation with the grammatical form of a Moore’s Paradox sentence, and the de re interpretations of a sentence that has the grammatical form of a Moore’s Paradox are not odd. An alternate, and the original, form of Moore’s Paradox is (22). The corresponding interpretations for the first-person example (23a) would be the de se (23b) and the de re (23c) interpretations. ? It’s raining, but I do not believe it. (22) (23) a. I was re-elected governor of California, but I do not believe it. b. I was re-elected governor of California, but I do not believe that I myself was re-elected governor of California. c. I was re-elected governor of California, but I do not believe myself to have been re-elected governor of California.¹⁸ But the de se (23b) is not an utterance that has the form of a Moore’s Paradox sentence. And it does not have the assertoric oddity of (22). The utterance-type (23b) could be the statement of an amnesiac Gray Davis who has not remembered having been re-elected governor of California, has been told that he is Gray Davis ¹⁶ (19′ ) a. b. ¹⁷ (21′ ) a. b. c. ¹⁸ (23′ ) a. b. c.

I believe of myself that I am governor-elect of California, but I am not. I believe myself to be the governor-elect of California, but I am not. I believe that I am governor-elect of California, but I am not. ? I believe that I myself am governor-elect of California, but I am not. *I believe that I myself am governor-elect of California, but I myself am not. I am governor-elect of California, but I do not believe it. I am governor-elect of California, but I do not believe that I myself am governor-elect of California. I am governor-elect of California, but I do not believe myself to be governor-elect of California.

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and that Gray Davis was re-elected governor of California, but being an amnesiac and not necessarily believing what he was told, would still disavow the first-person thought . The case I have in mind is a case where the amnesiac patient Gray Davis is told, ‘‘You are Gray Davis, and Gray Davis was re-elected governor of California.’’ Here are some possibilities in this context: Gray Davis can now say, taking the latter conjunct of the informant’s word for it, which it would be easy for an amnesiac to do, as it does not involve his own identity, ‘‘Gray Davis was re-elected governor of California, but I do not believe that I myself was re-elected governor of California’’—not understanding or, if understanding, not taking in or, if taking in, not accepting from the first conjunct that he is Gray Davis—he is still an amnesiac after all and does not know who he is—and not remembering and so rejecting in the second conjunct a thought of the form even when ‘I’ and ‘Gray Davis’ are co-referential in the utterance.¹⁹ Furthermore, he can acceptably utter assertively ‘‘I was re-elected governor of California, but I do not believe that I myself was re-elected governor of California’’ (as Moore (1993: 207) would have put it, distinguishing the case from a case of assertion—see n. 13), since the semantic value of the first ‘I’ is Gray Davis in this example, and Gray Davis was re-elected governor of California, even though he doubts the word of the informant that he is Gray Davis. He could warrantedly assert the sentence if he were willing to accept the testimony of the informant that he is Gray Davis and that Gray Davis was re-elected governor, even if he does not remember being re-elected governor of California. He can felicitously assert the sentence ‘Even if I was re-elected governor of California, I do not believe that I myself was re-elected governor of California’, which ought to be just as linguistically ‘‘odd’’ an utterance as the allegedly ‘‘odd’’ Moore Paradox ‘even’ sentence ‘Even if it is raining, I do not believe that it is raining’. Finally, he can felicitously assert the sentence ‘I was re-elected governor of California, but I do not believe that I myself was re-elected governor of California’ if he is willing to humor the informant and echo him in the first conjunct of his utterance by using the pronoun ‘I’, in what I shall call ‘an indirectly referring, echoic use of ‘I’ ’, a speaker’s use parasitic on the informant’s beliefs about the referent of the informant’s use of ‘you’. When Gray Davis speaks, the informant’s ‘you’ shifts to the speaker’s ‘I’. ‘I’ will be used by the speaker in place of the informant’s ‘you’ to refer to the person whom the informant has implied, falsely in the view of the utterer of ‘I’, satisfies the description ‘the person re-elected governor of California’, which, as it happens, contrary to the beliefs of the utterer, is himself. The speaker has a meta-linguistic belief about the informant’s use of ‘you’. In light of this belief, his own use of ‘I’ will be ¹⁹ The importance of conjunctive sentences in examples of these kinds has been clear from the earliest discussions in Geach (1957, 1972) and in Castañeda (1966: 130, n.1; 145).

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acceptable in a conversation with the informant, whom the patient believes to believe that the individual re-elected governor of California is he the patient, believing as he does that the informant believes that he the patient is Gray Davis and Gray Davis was re-elected governor of California. The linguistic complexity here results from the utterer of ‘I’ also simultaneously using ‘I’ non-parasitically to refer to himself, which I shall call ‘a directly referring use of ‘I’ ’.²⁰ The two uses converge on one referent.²¹ My case of an indirect referring use is a variant of the Donnellan referring use of a definite description, applied to ‘I’. In this kind of case the speaker would believe that the hearer believes falsely that the man is drinking a martini, and so the speaker wants to cooperate with the hearer in the conversation by maximizing agreement in their usage of referring terms, getting the reference right (from the point of view of the hearer) through the vehicle of the hearer’s false belief. But the speaker’s belief is itself false, and the man he describes, incorrectly he thinks, by ‘the man drinking a martini’ is actually drinking a martini. The case is different from Donnellan’s, since the speaker intends to make a ‘‘referring use’’ but unintentionally succeeds in making an ‘‘attributive use’’ of a definite description. In my amnesiac example, the speaker would be prepared to assert the first conjunct ‘‘I was re-elected governor of California’’ (and the assertion turns out to be true), but, in the case as I described it, he would not himself remember that he was re-elected, i.e. not himself accepting any thought of the form , and as a skeptical amnesiac he does not accept what he was told by the informant—that he is Gray Davis. So, again, since he disavows a belief whose content is , he would have to say ‘‘but I do not believe that I myself was re-elected governor of California’’. Such is the significance of the reflexive pronoun ‘myself ’ in the second conjunct of (23b).²² I do not think that in the case that I just elaborated the utterance of (23b) sounds odd. I think the utterance is felicitous in the context that I described. But I do not deny that it is an unusual context. For the example to work, one cannot assume that ‘‘told by an informant’’ entails ‘‘accepted by the hearer.’’ This is not ²⁰ Castañeda (1966: 144) uses similar language, viz. ‘a directly self-referring use of ‘I’ ’. ²¹ It is also possible for a parasitic use to diverge from the direct referring use of ‘I’. Castañeda (1966: 146) wants to hold the simple principle that ‘‘nobody can refer to another person by means of ‘I’ ’’. But then he gives an example of Norman Kretzmann’s to the contrary (Castañeda (1966: 147, n. 12)): I am indebted to Norman Kretzmann for the following teasing use of ‘I’ which looks like a counter-example to this claim. Suppose that there is a play about Privatus and that Privatus is in the audience. Suppose further that the actor representing Privatus is losing his moustache and that Privatus referring to the actor says ‘‘I am losing my moustache.’’ Castañeda calls this a teasing use, implying that the counter-example is spurious, but I think that a teasing, and so parasitic, use is a use rather than a non-use and so not spurious. ²² I am indebted to John Williams and Elisabeth Camp for comments that provoked me to clarify this example. The argument proceeds in the same way for (23′ b).

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an entailment, even if it is often a reliable inference, anymore than ‘the man called ‘the greatest showman on earth’ ’ necessarily denotes the greatest showman on earth. (An observation made by Kripke in Naming and Necessity.)²³ By contrast, the de re utterance-type (23c) ‘‘I was re-elected governor of California, but I do not believe myself to have been re-elected governor of California’’ is an interpretation of an utterance of sentence (23a) I was re-elected governor of California, but I do not believe it that has the form of a Moore’s Paradox sentence, but when asserted by Gray Davis, recovering consciousness after plastic surgery but otherwise unaddled, it can be felicitously and truly asserted when Gray Davis does not yet know that he is the same person as the person in the post-operative photograph, of whom he is asked, ‘‘Was this man re-elected governor of California?’’. Davis thinks that the anaesthesiologist is just checking his recovery from the anaesthetic by testing his knowledge of history. So the de re interpretation (23c) of a sentence that does have the form of a Moore Paradox sentence is not a linguistically paradoxical utterance-interpretation.²⁴ Compared to the previous standard form of a Moore’s Paradox sentence (20), where the problem with the case of the first-person content-clause is that the odd de se interpretation no longer has the form of a Moore’s Paradox sentence, and the de re interpretation of a sentence that has the form of a Moore’s Paradox is not odd, in this second standard form of a Moore’s Paradox sentence in the case of a first-person content-clause, again the de re interpretation of a sentence that has the form of a Moore’s paradox is not odd, but neither is the de se interpretation, which again does not have the form of a Moore’s Paradox sentence. Thus explanations that hinge essentially on the standard forms of Moore’s Paradox sentences cannot account for these content-clauses in the first-person. The interpretations of forms of Moore’s Paradox sentences are not odd, and the interpretation that is odd of the one version (20) of a standard Moore’s Paradox sentence does not have the Moore’s Paradox form. The discussion of this section has implications for the views elegantly sketched by Richard Moran (2001). In defending the cogency of the distinction between ‘‘subjective’’ and ‘‘objective’’ perspectives, or as Moran (2001: 68) more elegantly—and Sellarsianly—puts it, between ‘‘deliberative’’ and ‘‘theoretical’’ perspectives, Moran writes that an ‘‘examination of the first-person should account for why someone’s need to rely on behavioral evidence to report on his mental states would suggest something wrong with him, some state of dissociation, and would raise doubts about the rationality of those attitudes of his which are not accessible to him in the normal ‘immediate’ way’’. The linguistic examples of this section, of a psychiatric patient recovering from delusional states and of a surgical patient recovering from plastic surgery who does not yet know ²³ School-boy joke. A: If you call the tail of a dog a leg, how many legs does the dog have? B: Five. A: No, four; calling a tail a leg does not make it one. ²⁴ I would make the same claim for (23′ a,c).

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what he looks like, are felicitous, Moore’s Paradox utterances. It is precisely in these cases that the speaker relies on more than introspectible information in assessing his own mental states, and he or she is right to do so. In such speakers it is a sign of psychological harmony between their ‘‘inner’’ and ‘‘outer’’ rather than, as Moran suggests, evidence of dissociation. The use of Moore sentences indicates, Moran (2001: 68–9) suggests in the case of his example ‘‘I know this must be envy that I feel toward him (I believe it’s raining out), although there is nothing about him to be envied (but it’s not raining out),’’ that ‘‘whatever thought may be seeking expression here could only [my emphasis] be entertained under great tension’’. Like Sartre, and on his reading (though not on mine) Wittgenstein too, Moran wishes to criticize ‘‘theoretical certainty as our model for the achievement of self-knowledge’’. Yet my linguistic examples above, instances of the form of Moore’s paradox sentences, are not cases of entertaining a thought under great tension; they are an example of a linguistic report of the overcoming of a psychotic state and an example of understanding the contrast between facts and one’s limited knowledge of them. There is every reason to believe that a psychiatric patient’s ‘‘objective’’ empirical knowledge of the self, as in my first example, can contribute to a lessening of psychotic delusion and to a reducing of tension between the ‘‘inner’’ and the ‘‘outer,’’ a reduction that the utterance of the Moore sentence is designed to express. To turn Moran’s (2001: 68) point upside down, I would rephrase his remark that in ‘‘its most radical form, the sort of alienation [my emphasis] we’re considering would place the person in a situation he could only describe in an utterance that was a version of Moore’s paradox’’ by saying that in its most radical form the sort of psychological integration we’re considering would place the person in a situation he could only describe in an utterance that was a version of Moore’s paradox. The saying, or the entertaining of, such a thought is not paradoxical; it is not even an infelicitous utterance or verbal thought. Moran (2001: 84–5) is aware of such cases. He (2001: 84) even says that ‘‘were it to make sense for one to take such a purely theoretical view of oneself, then the thought expressed in a Moore-type sentence would describe a perfectly coherent empirical possibility on which one could sensibly report’’. This seems consistent with my examples, except that it is hard to understand the examples as ones in which a ‘‘purely theoretical view of oneself ’’ is being taken. Surely the utterances of my medical patients do not constitute thoughts in which they take a purely theoretical, scientific view of themselves. Their ordinary utterances seem a mix of the theoretically pure and the subjectively impure. Certainly there is no reason to think that their talk of their beliefs is solely dependent on ‘‘objective’’ empirical evidence. In example (19) I believe myself to have been re-elected governor of California, but I was not²⁵ one would have thought it quite the contrary. Looking at these uses of ‘believe’, one suspects that there is no more ²⁵ I believe myself to be governor-elect of California, but I am not.

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to the inner/outer distinction in the sense of ‘believe’ than Iris Murdoch (1985) or Hilary Putnam (2002) thought there was a fact/value distinction in the sense of ‘jealous’ or ‘bumptious’ (Murdoch 1985: 13, 23) or in the sense of ‘cruel’ (Putnam 2002: 34–5). The dichotomies that interest Moran, ‘‘inner’’/‘‘outer’’, ‘‘subjective’’/ ‘‘objective’’, and ‘‘rational’’/‘‘theoretical’’, are represented by him (2001: 84)—and this is supposed to be a good thing—as implying that the first ‘‘transcends any description of my psychological state’’ reported by the second. Thus it should be possible to contrast a ‘‘purely’’ theoretical/empirical beliefattribution, dependent on objective, psychological evidence, with a ‘‘rational agent’’, first-person conception of oneself as having beliefs about the world, beliefs to which one has access without ‘‘objective’’ evidence. But there is just no linguistic reason to think that people talk or think dichotomously in this way, or that in thinking of themselves as having beliefs about the world, they think of the world, and their ordinary beliefs about it, as transcending every description of their psychological states. The descriptions ‘jealous’ and ‘cruel’ are world-involving as much as mind-involving. First-person, present-tense, indicative mood uses of ‘believe’ are impure; they are mixtures of reporting and avowing, to use Moran’s (2001: 86) Wittgensteinian distinction. Reporting a belief is grounded in evidence; Moran claims that reporting a belief, even reporting one’s own belief, does not entail a commitment to the truth of the lower constituent ‘‘. . .’’ in ‘‘I believe . . .’’. By contrast, avowing is the expression of one’s commitment to the truth of the lower constituent. When one examines the utterances of the medical cases in (19), one realizes that, in Moran’s terms, the patient is both avowing and disavowing, hence presumably reporting his or her belief-state without commitment to the truth of the lower constituent. But the theory of Indirect Speech Acts permits just such complexity in utterances (Searle 1975; Davison 1975; Lycan 1984). The indicator of illocutionary force in the first conjunct is what, following J. F. M. Hunter (1990), I have called a ‘‘quasi-performative’’ use of ‘I believe’. Its use by a speaker in the first conjunct of (19) purports to establish the existence of a belief-state committed to the truth of the content. But a denial of that content by the second conjunct of (19) creates for an utterance of the whole conjunction an indirect speech act of reporting a belief-state with a false content, with the peculiarity that the belief-state is the speaker’s own. (The possibility of this peculiarity is noted, happily, by Moran 2001: 89 n. 11.) Thus in our linguistic understanding of the utterance, we focus primarily on the indirect illocutionary force—reporting—of the conjunction, while also understanding that secondarily the speaker is also committed by the grammatical form of the utterance to the truth of his or her belief-content. However one hopes to explain psychologically the mental or brain states of such individuals, or even to describe commonsensically what is going on ‘‘inside’’ the patient, there is nothing linguistically anomalous in the language used. The patient is revealing

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as much as his or her competence in the language permits. Nothing in what is said indicates how much of what is uttered is about the inner or the outer. So, contrary to Moran’s (2001: 83–4) hopes, Moore Paradox sentences are not touchstones ‘‘for difficulties arising from the introduction of an empirical or theoretical point of view whose deliverances may clash with what we want to say from the point of view of a rational deliberator, a point of view ‘transcendent’ with respect to the psychological facts as currently constituted’’. The fact that a Moore sentence conjunction can have two, independently true conjuncts ‘I believe it is raining’ and ‘It is not raining’ does not suggest by being used to make both a true and an infelicitous assertion that there is a deep clash between a third-person, objective perspective and a first-person subjective perspective. Moran is guilty of a metaphysical subliming of language that ordinary speakers of English avoid. Many Moore Paradox sentences when uttered are felicitous, indirect speech acts of reporting while simultaneously remaining grammatically direct but secondary speech acts of avowing. In indirect speech acts like (19), ‘I believe’ expresses a ‘‘thick’’ concept, one that is not purely theoretical and scientific, or independent of ‘‘expressing’’ a commitment to the truth of the content. That is why Moran (2001: 85) is mistaken to say in general that when a ‘‘belief is described, it is kept within the brackets of the psychological operator, ‘believe’,’’ without a commitment to the truth of the content. Moore sentences with first-person content-clauses are not paradoxical. Nevertheless the linguistic evidence that I have considered above does suggest a new form of a Moore’s Paradox in sentences of belief de se. I summarize the conclusion in the next section. V. M O O R E ’ S PA R A D OX DE SE From the evidence in Section IV, I conclude that (a) if QI is a first-person subject Noun Phrase sentence, there is no linguistic oddity to the form < QI ∧ ¬ BI [QI ]> of a Moore Paradox sentence and that (b) there is a linguistic oddity to the form < BI [QI∗ ] ∧ ¬ Q> I , but only if the first-person subject Noun Phrase in QI∗ is an indirect reflexive ‘I myself ’, i.e. is a Castañeda (1966) ‘‘quasi-indicator’’ ‘I*’. The form must be < BI [QI∗ ] ∧ ¬ Q> I , as in (21b), but this sentence is not of a Moore Paradox form < BI [QI ] ∧ ¬ Q> I . The standard forms of Moore’s paradox belief utterances do not, in fact, seem to me logically or linguistically paradoxical in the first-person contentclause cases, since they would be uttered felicitously by recovering, previously delusional psychiatric patients. The truly problematic forms of Moore’s Paradox are quite linguistically different. The New First-Person Problem of Moore’s Paradox De Se is this: we need an explanation of the oddity of the de se utterance (21b), and, more generally, of the oddity of the de se form (24). (24) ? I believe that I myself F, but I do not F.

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I shall not, in this essay, attempt to provide an analysis of the New Problem of Moore’s Paradox De Se. Instead I would like to show what consequences for ‘‘privileged access’’ to beliefs follow if one takes indirect reflexive pronouns seriously. V I . S H O E M A K E R ’ S F I R S T E X P L A N AT I O N O F M O O R E ’ S PA R A D OX David Rosenthal (1986, 1993) and Sydney Shoemaker (1996) have offered accounts of conscious intentional states and of first-person privileged access to mental states that were, in part, motivated by consequences they drew from the linguistic absurdity of asserting standard forms of Moore’s Paradox sentences. David Rosenthal (1986) has used Moore’s Paradox to show that ‘‘expressing’’ a mental state is distinct from ‘‘reporting’’ that one is in it, that the oddity of asserting a Moore Paradox sentence consists in one conjunct of the sentence reporting the absence of a mental state that the other conjunct purports to express [It’s raining but I do not believe it] and that there is a causal connection between speech acts and the mental states that they express. In a later essay Rosenthal (1993) goes much further, using the distinction between expressing a mental state and reporting it to argue for his famous conclusion, that a mental state’s being conscious consists simply in its being accompanied by a higher-order thought. Sydney Shoemaker (1996) uses Moore’s Paradox to a different end, offering a different view of the significance of Moore’s Paradox, one that leads him to an argument for first-person access to our beliefs: a defense of the principle that ‘‘If I believe that P, then I believe that I believe that P.’’ Here my task is to examine Shoemaker’s arguments for ‘‘privileged access’’, as they are suggested by his analysis and explanation of Moore’s Paradox first-person sentences. In his influential essay ‘‘Moore’s Paradox and Self-Knowledge’’ Sydney Shoemaker (1996) has two explanations of the oddity of Moore’s Paradox. He first proposes that instead of considering the relation between assertion and belief in explaining the paradoxicality of Moore sentences, he will focus instead on the peculiarity of believing what one has said or thought when one has said or thought . On this view, while the thought of the form can be true, the conjunction (C) < (P ∧ ¬ BI [P]) ∧ BI (P ∧ ¬ BI [P])> is alleged by Shoemaker to be inconsistent. On the assumption that believing a conjunction entails believing each conjunct, an explicit contradiction < ¬BI [P] ∧ BI [P]> is derivable. But what should one conclude from this? Shoemaker (1996: 76) concludes that if the sentence of the Moore Paradox form ‘‘can be believed at all, the subject of such a belief could not, logically, believe that she had it’’. But that is not what follows from the negation of (C). Rather, what follows, among other consequences, is , i.e. if P then the person who does not (first-personally) believe P cannot (first-personally) believe both P and that he/she does not (first-personally)

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believe it. And, of course, if one does not believe something, even if it were true, why should one have the belief that one does not believe it? There are many propositions that I fail to believe, among them many propositions that I have never considered and that are true; I do not expect myself to believe that I do not believe a particular, true, never-thought-of proposition. Shoemaker’s argument merely demonstrates a truism about belief. But Shoemaker thinks that he has demonstrated something more than a mere truism. He thinks that he has shown that it is logically impossible for one to believe a Moore sentence of the form . Of course, if Shoemaker had shown < ¬♦BI (P ∧ ¬ BI [P])> , he would have shown that it is necessary that is compatible (consistent) with what I believe, i.e. he would have shown < CI (P → BI [P])> . So, for example, he would have shown that it is a necessary truth that it is compatible with everything I believe that if the smallest integer that can be expressed by the sum of two cubes in two ways is 1729, then I believe that the smallest integer that can be expressed by the sum of two cubes in two ways is 1729, and the same goes for any P whatsoever. But I am not omniscient, and I believe that I am not. That is, I believe that there is some true proposition that I do not believe; so an axiom of my belief system is < BI (∃p(Tr(p) ∧ ¬ BI (p) )> . Hence, it is compatible with everything I believe that for some proposition po , < if po , then I believe p> o is false. But then, what Shoemaker has claimed to have shown is inconsistent with the denial of my (and your) omniscience. And I really don’t think one wants a philosophical exploration of the consequences of Moore Paradox belief sentences that begins with the claim that Sydney, or any of us believers, is omniscient.²⁶ V I I . S H O E M A K E R ’ S S E C O N D E X P L A N AT I O N O F M O O R E ’ S PA R A D OX Shoemaker then offers a second explanation of Moore’s Paradox by supporting a claim of ‘‘self-knowledge’’, more precisely a claim of first-person access to one’s beliefs. I shall summarize his account. Suppose I have a belief with content
, i.e. I believe P. In the stereotypical cases of belief, e.g. not selfdeception, repressed belief, or forgetfulness (Shoemaker 1996: 80), because it is believed, the content
is ‘‘available’’—I would say ‘accessible’—as ²⁶ So beliefs for the non-megalomaniacs among us are ‘‘incomplete’’, in a sense analogous to the incompleteness of a formally axiomatized system rich enough to contain formalized arithmetic. In earlier work I explored the parallel between the report of the existence of a true but formally unprovable Gödel sentence and a Moore paradox sentence like (20); see Jay David Atlas, ‘‘What is Paradoxical about G. E. Moore’s Paradox?—Rationality, Sincerity, Implicature, and the Selflimitations of Belief ’’, November 1995, MS, Pomona College, Claremont, California. Needless to say, I do not think that a Gödel sentence is assertorically anomalous, nor do I think that the sentence that reports its existence is asserted anomalously. The relationship between a Moore sentence and the report of the existence of a Gödel sentence is of great interest, logically and linguistically.

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a premise in my theoretical and practical reasoning. When so, I consciously think it and, furthermore, ‘‘mentally assent’’ to it. (Mentally assenting is like verbally asserting it or answering a query about its truth by replying ‘yes’—only quieter.) But it is analytic (for Shoemaker) that mentally assenting to
is a conscious process; Shoemaker (1996: 79) actually writes ‘necessary’ instead of ‘analytic’, but I take the liberty. When doing so, one ‘‘manifests’’—we language mavens would have said ‘expresses’, though that is not without its problems—that one believes P. This is a causal model: one asserts P because one believes P (and is being entertained), just as one has spots because one has measles. Having spots ‘‘expresses’’/‘‘manifests’’ measles (Sellars 1969/1996).) The next step in Shoemaker’s argument is one for which I can find no argument in his essay. He wants to go from ‘‘manifesting’’ that one believes P to ‘‘manifestly assenting’’ to one’s believing P (Shoemaker 1996: 82–3). For if this inferential move were acceptable, then one would be assenting to one’s believing P. The argument would now show that if one assents to , one assents to one’s believing P. Since assenting is conscious (an analytic claim for Shoemaker), one is aware of assenting to believing P. Since assent is a kind of believing—a stipulation (Shoemaker 1996: 78), one is consciously believing that one believes P. By this argument, Shoemaker gets two large philosophical payoffs. First, he gets the claim that if one assents to , one assents to . Second, he gets the claim that we have first-person access to our beliefs: (a) if one believes P, one will be able to access the content
; (b) if one is able to access the belief-content
, one will both believe (at least tacitly) that one is able to access the belief-content
and consciously believe that one is able to access the belief-content
. The question is how, in the crucial step, Shoemaker goes from manifesting that one believes P to ‘‘manifesting assent’’ that one believes P. There is a hint in the text (Shoemaker 1996: 82). According to Shoemaker, saying (sincerely) can manifest that one believes P. If one sincerely asserts , and one sincerely asserts it because (and only because?) one mentally assents to it, then one believes that one believes P, because it is analytic for Shoemaker that one mentally assents to believing P only if one believes that one believes P. And the deed is done; if one manifests believing P, one manifestly assents to believing P. So if one believes P, one believes that one believes P—privileged access (Shoemaker’s ‘‘self-intimation’’). The crux of the matter is Shoemaker’s claim that asserting (sincerely) P manifests that one believes P. If ‘manifest’ is paraphrasable by (one sense of ) ‘express’, one has the claim < asserting (sincerely) expresses that one believes P> . But this claim is only plausible if ‘express’ is not taken in its causal, manifesting sense, e.g. the sense in which one’s asserting P expresses one’s believing P. It is plausible only in the semantic sense of ‘express’, that in which

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my assertion expresses the thought that I believe P. (See Sellars 1969/1996.)²⁷ In short, the apparent success of Shoemaker’s argument relies essentially on an equivocation between two senses of ‘express’, the causal (manifesting) sense and the semantic sense. Had Shoemaker’s argument succeeded, he would have had the following explanation of the oddity of the Moore sentence schema . On Shoemaker’s view we may derive from < BI (P ∧ ¬ BI [P])> , on the assumption that believing a conjunction entails believing each conjunct, < BI [P] ∧ BI [¬ BI [P]]> . But if it is a theorem of the logic of belief that if I believe P, then I believe that I believe P, one then infers < BI [BI [P]] ∧ BI [¬ BI [P]]> . By the converse conjunction principle to the previous one, one may infer < BI [BI [P] ∧ ¬ BI [P]]> . So I, the believer of the Moore sentence ‘It’s raining but I don’t believe it’, if my believing P entails my believing that I believe P, and if belief distributes over conjunction, believe an overt contradiction. What is essential to this explanation of the oddity of the original form of a Moore’s Paradox sentence by appeal to the existence of a contradictory beliefcontent is Shoemaker’s elaborate argument in support of the view that if I believe P, then I believe that I believe P. But that is just the argument that fails; it seems to succeed only because of an equivocation, a slide between two senses that motivates an illicit move from ‘‘manifesting’’ that I believe P to ‘‘manifestly assenting’’ to .²⁸ Shoemaker has assumed that by deducing a contradictory belief-content from believing the Moore sentence, he has shown why the uttering of the sentence assertively is ‘‘odd’’. This is a traditional line to take. To my knowledge it was first employed by the American logician C. H. Langford in 1942, in his contribution to the Schilpp volume on Moore ‘‘The Notion of Analysis in Moore’s Philosophy’’ (Langford 1942/1968: 333), where he writes: I want to cite an example which is due to A.M. MacIver and which is worth repeating on its own account.∗ Suppose someone to remark: ‘‘He thinks that he has been to Grantchester but he has not.’’ The person referred to may entertain this proposition as an hypothesis. But suppose he actually asserts the proposition: ‘‘I think that I have been to Grantchester but I have not.’’ This sounds self-contradictory, and the reason is that he will actually be saying that he thinks that he has been to Grantchester, whereas the but-clause in the indicative mood will signify or mean pragmatically# that he does not think so.∗∗ *See Analysis, Vol. 5 (1937–8), 43–50, and The Journal of Symbolic Logic, Vol. 3 (1938), 158. ²⁷ ‘Assertion’ has the traditional act/object ambiguity in English: assertion as an act of asserting, assertion as what is asserted. ²⁸ Hintikka’s (1962) seminal discussion of the logic of belief takes the Moore sentence to be ‘‘doxastically indefensible,’’ i.e. that one’s believing one’s Moore sentence is inconsistent with Hintikka’s modal S4 axioms for the belief-operator. Of course, the characteristic axiom for S4 is, in the case of the belief operator, just < Bp → BBp> .

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#(My note: Langford (1942/1968: 332) wrote: We may call what a man does not state, but intends his linguistic behavior to signify, his pragmatical meaning, and we may distinguish this from the sense of his words, which is the proposition expressed by them.$ [Langford’s note:$ This term has been used by Charles Morris in the same or a similar sense.]) **The course of Moore’s argument in ‘‘A Defence of Common Sense’’ will be clearer if this distinction between formal and pragmatical contradiction is carefully observed. For in saying that certain philosophers contradict themselves when they assert, in effect, ‘‘There have been many other human beings beside myself, and none of them, including myself, has ever known of the existence of other human beings,’’ Moore is not holding that a formal contradiction can be derived from the sense of those words, but only that the pragmatical meaning of such an assertion is incompatible with its literal meaning.

The peculiarity of Langford’s analysis is that he is diagnosing the ‘‘apparent self-contradiction’’ of a statement of the form < BI [P]&¬P> by the hypothesis that in saying < ¬P> the speaker ‘‘pragmatically means’’ < ¬B[P]> . There is no recognition from Langford of the need to discuss an apparent scope distinction between the wide-scope negative belief-proposition that Langford takes to be the speaker’s pragmatical meaning and the narrow-scope negative proposition B[¬P], which might be an equally good candidate for the pragmatical meaning of uttering < ¬P> . Without defense—and I find the claim dubious—Langford chooses the wide-scope negative formula as the speaker’s meaning in order to explain the apparent self-contradiction by an actual logical contradiction between the sense of ‘I believe I have been to Grantchester’ and the speaker’s alleged pragmatical meaning ‘‘I don’t believe I have’’ when asserting ‘I have not’.²⁹ In addition he thinks it is self-evident that such a logical inconsistency between these different sorts of ‘‘meaning’’ suffices to explain the apparent ‘‘oddness’’ of asserting the Moore sentence. But no theory providing the explanatory connection is offered at all. In a similar vein, George Lakoff (1975: 264–5) discusses Moore’s paradox in the form < P&B[¬P]> . Lakoff ’s explanation of the paradoxicality of the utterance is a version of a solution that appeals essentially to a speech act sincerity condition, to an incorrigibility thesis, and to rationality assumptions. In addition to the sincerity condition ‘‘if x sincerely asserts P, x believes P’’, Lakoff makes three assumptions: (i) that if one believes a conjunctive statement, one believes ²⁹ There is an appealing, but a mistaken, argument to support Langford’s reasoning. Suppose a` la Moore in asserting < ¬P> the speaker pragmatically means < BI [¬P]> . The consistency of belief requires the axiom < B[¬P] → ¬B[¬¬P]> , while Belief Double Negation yields < B[P] → B[¬¬P]> , from which there follows < B[¬P] → ¬B[P]> . If pragmatic meaning is preserved under logical consequence (modulo the axioms of rational belief ), then if the speaker pragmatically means < B[¬P]> , he also means < ¬B[P]> . Such consequences might be thought to be plausible if a speaker intends his utterings to signify the logical consequences—or perhaps more restrictedly the direct logical consequences (Atlas 1991: 137), modulo the axioms of rational belief—of what he intends his utterings to signify. The problem is, the preservation of pragmatic meaning under logical consequence is really quite implausible. So the easy argument for Langford’s position does not succeed.

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the individual conjuncts (belief conjunction-elimination < B[P&Q] → (B[P] &B[Q]) > ), an assumption also made by Shoemaker in his first argument, (ii) the incorrigibility of beliefs about mental states: that if one believes that one believes P, then one believes P (i.e. < BB[P] → B[P]> ), and the consistency assumption (iii) < B[P] → ¬B[¬P]> . He then can deduce the contradiction < B[¬P]&¬B[¬P]> from the assumption of a sincere, rational assertion of his Moore sentence. By explaining rather than Moore’s form , Lakoff avoids assuming Shoemaker’s self-intimation of belief (i.e. < B[P] → BB[P]> , the converse of the incorrigibility thesis). Lakoff (1975: 265) goes on to claim that the same principles will allow a deduction of contradiction from the assumption of a sincere assertion of the original Moore sentence form in order to explain the latter’s assertoric oddness, but so far as I can see this claim is incorrect. In order to deduce a contradiction, he needs the S4-like, self-intimation principle that, anti-Cartesianly, Lakoff thinks is questionable, though he does not explain why he thinks so (Lakoff 1975: 264). Langford and Lakoff explain the peculiarity of the Moore assertion by deductions of a logical contradiction of two sorts. In Langford’s case, precisely because the original assertion sounds self-contradictory to him, he claims that an inconsistency can be derived from the conjunction of the speaker’s unasserted pragmatical meaning and the asserted literal sense. In Lakoff’s case, because the assertion of the Moore sentence sounds odd to him, he claims that a sincere, rational assertion of the Moore sentence is logically inconsistent with the principles of rational belief and of speech-act theory. Yet it seems to me an open question whether the assertion of the Moore sentence does sound self-contradictory, and a closed question that even if asserting it seemed odd, the alleged reductio of the rational, sincere assertion of the Moore sentence could not explain the assertoric oddness. A difficulty with Langford’s explanation is that there are a denumerable number of self-contradictory statements that are perfectly felicitous, so that the logical inconsistency of the total signification of a statement cannot be sufficient for its assertoric oddness.³⁰ Half of the needed contradiction is not even asserted. In the case of Lakoff’s explanation, since neither a speaker’s insincerity nor the failure of the speaker’s beliefs to conform to Lakoff’s two axioms of rational belief and the incorrigibility thesis could be explanatory of the Moore statement being linguistically odd, it is bizarre to think that the impossibility of the rational, sincere assertion of a Moore sentence could explain the oddity of uttering a Moore sentence assertively ³⁰ For example, ‘0 = 1’, or even better ‘147/356 = 0.41292’, though contradictory, √ is not uttered especially not in a reductio ad absurdum proof, nor is the sentence ‘ 13 π = ∞ infelicitously, e−x2 dx’, an equation whose right-hand side is a definite Riemann integral, which is also −∞ a contradictory sentence but felicitously utterable, nor is the following, necessary falsehood, a non-theorem of the calculus, believed by European mathematicians for two hundred years to be a theorem and asserted as such, ‘Every real-valued function f: R → R that is continuous on the closed interval [a, b] is differentiable on the interval.’

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(as Moore (1993: 207) would put it), even if the impossibility of a sincere, ‘‘rational’’ assertion explains why either the utterance is insincere, or expresses a ‘‘non-rational’’ belief or a corrigible belief, or is not an assertion—oddities all, but none of insincerity, non-rationality, corrigibility, and an assertoric speech-act ‘‘misfire’’ is the oddity of uttering the Moore sentence assertively. None of those consequences would seem to explain the particular oddity of uttering the Moore sentence assertively. (As Paul Benacerraf once remarked, in reaction to this claim, an adequate account of the oddity must appeal to principles that every speaker/hearer can be expected to ‘‘know’’, in the sense in which we know our language and its uses. Not every speaker, surely, is natively a Port Royal logician.) The oddity remains even if the Moore utterance merely purports to be an assertion. Furthermore, ‘‘nonrationality’’ and insincerity of belief are properties of the asserter not of the utterance, so it is a category error to think that they can explain the linguistic oddity of the sentence uttered assertively. Arguments that appeal to self-contradiction or inconsistency with supposed rational principles of belief just do not explain the linguistic phenomena. What would explain it is a tale for another occasion. But if Lakoff finds privileged access dubious, Shoemaker and Hintikka find it self-evidently or necessarily true. I have already shown that Shoemaker’s arguments fail to support the privileged access thesis. Can the approach that I have been taking in this paper offer a definitive answer to the question whether the privileged access thesis is correct? V I I I . A LO G I C O - L I N G U I S T I C A RG U M E N T AG A I N S T P R I V I L E G E D AC C E S S ( “S E L F - I N T I M AT I O N ”) Why, apart from Cartesian prejudices about the transparency of the mind, should one have expected the privileged access thesis < BI [P] → BI [BI [P]]> to be correct? (25) If I believe it’s raining, then I believe that I believe it’s raining. The sentence in (25) has only two interpretations, the de se in the consequent of the conditional, in (26a), the de re in the consequent of the conditional, in (26b), and the de dicto in the antecedents. (26) a. I believe it’s raining ⇒ I believe that I myself believe it’s raining. b. I believe it’s raining ⇒ I believe myself to believe it’s raining. Neither interpretation makes the conditional true, either as an analytic entailment or a theorem of a logic of belief. The de re interpretation goes from the hypothesized truth of a non-first-person-content de dicto antecedent to an objectively first-person content, de re consequent. The de se interpretation goes from a non-first-person content de dicto antecedent to an essentially-first-personcontent de se consequent. Neither implication is semantically justified.³¹ The ³¹ As I mentioned in n. 12, those who cannot get the de re interpretation of the consequent in (26b) will at least get the de se interpretation in (26a), which suffices for my argument.

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English grammar of ‘believes’ sentences carries no commitment to first-person beliefs being ‘‘self-intimating’’ in Shoemaker’s sense and so to no distinctive first-person access to our beliefs. In fact, the falsity of (26) shows that the ordinary concept of belief, the one we express in our everyday talk, the one meant by the lexical item ‘believes’, explicitly eschews such a commitment to privileged access!This is what indirect reflexive pronouns tell us about belief: the ordinary, linguistically expressed notion of belief cannot be Cartesian. At his commentary on an early version of Shoemaker’s essay, at the Pacific Division of the American Philosophical Association in 1994, Rogers Albritton, reported by Shoemaker (1996: 81), in reaction to the idea that if I believe P then I believe that I believe P, besides pointing out the obvious infinite regress of first-person higher-order beliefs, remarked, of someone who says ‘I believe it’s raining’, ‘‘Where is it written that it takes two beliefs, or even one with two contents [‘‘P’’ and ‘‘I believe P’’], to confess that one believes it’s raining. Why can’t I just bare my soul in the matter?’’ Such an Albrittonian comment! The linguistic argument of this essay shows that Albritton’s intuition was correct.

REFERENCES Atlas, J. D. (1989), Philosophy without Ambiguity (Oxford: Clarendon Press). (1991), ‘‘Topic/Comment, Presupposition, Logical Form, and Focus Stress Implicatures: The Case of Focal Particles ‘Only’ and ‘Also’’ ’, Journal of Semantics, 8: 127–47. (2004), ‘‘Presupposition’’, in G. Ward and L. Horn (eds.), Encyclopedia of Pragmatics (Oxford: Blackwell), pp. 29–52. (2005), Logic, Meaning, and Conversation: Semantical Underdeterminacy, Implicature, and Their Interface (New York: Oxford University Press). and Levinson, S. (1981), ‘It-clefts, Informativeness, and Logical Form: Radical Pragmatics (Revised Standard Version)’, in P. Cole (ed.), Radical Pragmatics (New York: Academic Press), pp. 1–61. Bach, K. (1987), Thought and Reference (Oxford: Clarendon Press). Boër, S., and Lycan, W. (1986), Knowing Who (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press). Braun, David (1998), ‘‘Understanding Belief Reports’’, Philosophical Review, 107: 555–95. (2002), ‘‘Cognitive Significance, Attitude Ascriptions, Ways of Believing’’, Philosophical Studies, 108: 65–81. Castañeda, H.-N. (1966), ‘ ‘‘He’’: A Study in the Logic of Self-Consciousness’, Ratio, 8: 130–57. (1989), Thinking, Language, and Experience (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press). Davison, A. (1975), ‘‘Indirect Speech Acts and What to Do With Them’’, in P. Cole and J. Morgan (eds.), Syntax and Semantics 3: Speech Acts (New York: Academic Press), pp. 143–85.

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Geach, Peter (1957), ‘‘On Beliefs about Oneself ’’, Analysis, 18: 23–4; repr. in P. Geach (1972), Logic Matters (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press), pp. 128–9. Hintikka, J. (1962), Knowledge and Belief (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press). Hunter, J. F. M. (1990), Wittgenstein on Words as Instruments: Lessons in Philosophical Psychology (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press). Kripke, S. (1980), Naming and Necessity (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press). Lakoff, G. (1975), ‘‘Pragmatics and Natural Logic’’, in E. L. Keenan (ed.), Formal Semantics of Natural Language (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), pp. 253–86. Langford, C. H. (1942/1968), ‘‘The Notion of Analysis in Moore’s Philosophy’’, in P. A. Schlipp (ed.), The Philosophy of G.E. Moore, vol. i (LaSalle, Ill.: Open Court), pp. 321–42. Levinson, S. C. (1995), ‘‘Three Levels of Meaning’’, in F. R. Palmer (ed.), Grammar and Meaning (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), pp. 90–115. Lewis, D. K. (1979a), ‘‘Attitudes De Dicto and De Se’’, Philosophical Review, 88/513–43; repr. in Lewis, Philosophical Papers, vol. i (New York: Oxford University Press), pp. 133–56. (1979b), ‘‘Scorekeeping in a Language Game’’, Journal of Philosophical Logic, 8: 339–59; repr. in Lewis, Philosophical Papers, vol. i (New York: Oxford University Press), pp. 233–49. Lycan, W. (1984), Logical Form of Natural Language (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press). Moore, G. E. (1993), Selected Writings (London: Routledge). Moran, R. (2001), Authority and Estrangement: An Essay on Self-Knowledge (Princeton: Princeton University Press). Murdoch, I. (1985), The Sovereignty of Good (London: ARK). Perry, J. (1977), ‘‘Frege on Demonstratives’’, Philosophical Review, 86: 474–97. Prior, A. N. (1967), ‘‘On Spurious Egocentricity’’, Philosophy, 42: 326–35. Putnam, H. (2002), The Collapse of the Fact/Value Dichotomy and Other Essays (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press). Quine, W. V. O. (1960), Word and Object (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press). Rosenthal, D. (1986), ‘‘Intentionality’’, in P. French, T. Uehling, and H. Wettstein (eds.), Midwest Studies in Philosophy, 10 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press), pp. 151–84. (1993), ‘‘Thinking that One Thinks’’, in M. Davies and G. Humphreys (eds.), Consciousness (Oxford: Blackwell), pp. 197–223. Searle, J. (1975), ‘‘Indirect Speech Acts’’, in P. Cole and J. Morgan (eds.), Syntax and Semantics 3: Speech Acts (New York: Academic Press), pp. 59–82. (1983), Intentionality (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Sellars, W. (1969), ‘‘Language as Thought and as Communication’’, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 29; repr. in H. Geirsson and M. Losonsky (eds.), Readings in Language and Mind (Oxford: Blackwell, 1996), pp. 214–32. Shoemaker, S. (1996), ‘‘Moore’s Paradox and Self-knowledge’’, in S. Shoemaker, The First Person Perspective and Other Essays (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), pp. 74–93. Wittgenstein, L. (1974), Letters to Russell, Keynes, and Moore (Oxford: Blackwell).

7 Moore’s Paradox and the Transparency of Belief Jonathan E. Adler and Bradley Armour-Garb

A number of philosophers have thought to extend Moore’s Paradox to concepts other than belief, e.g., I want Tina to go out with me, but I’m indifferent to whether she does. The scope of Moore’s Paradox is the problem of what concepts besides belief will generate a Moore’s (or Moorean) Paradox from the following schema: (MP@) I @ that (p, but it’s not the case that I @ that p), where @ is a schematic variable ranging over elements of a delimited class of propositional attitude verbs (e.g., desire, belief). In particular, we want to investigate the question, ‘Is the Moore’s Paradoxical nature of the paradigm, (MPi ) p, but I don’t believe that p, inherited from being instantiated in (MP@)?’ If so, what does this tell us about the nature of belief ? If we compare (MPi ) with another putative instance of (MP@), (MPii ) I desire that ( p, but I don’t desire that p), an immediate difference is evident—indeed, one that we take to hold generally: Only with (MPi ) do we eliminate an explicit place for an instance of ‘@’. So an affirmative answer to whether (MPi ) inherits its Moore’s Paradox nature from (MP@) depends upon—but not only upon—whether assertion expresses or implies belief. We examine this matter by reference to a speech-act account of illocutionary force and of the Unger-Williamson thesis¹—that, roughly, the norm of assertion is that one properly asserts that p only if one knows it. As we will show, reflection on this norm serves to elucidate the relevant notion of belief. Thanks to John N. Williams and an anonymous referee for comments. ¹ Peter Unger, Ignorance (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1975). Timothy Williamson, ‘Knowing and Asserting’, Philosophical Review, 105/4 (1996), 489–523, repr. with minor additions in his Knowledge and Its Limits (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), ch. 11.

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The question of whether (MPi ) fits under schema (MP@) leads us to critical reflection on the property we regard as central to resolving Moore’s Paradox—that belief is transparent to its content: To believe that p is for it to be the case (from one’s point of view) that: p.² With others, we construe Moore’s Paradox as essentially first-personal.³ Does the first-personal transparency of belief fail for other instances of @ that might be held to generate variants of Moore’s Paradox? It does not appear to hold for degrees of belief as with forms like: (MPiii ) I’m pretty sure that (p, but I am not inclined to believe that p). In order to address these questions, we return to the beginning: Is Moore’s Paradox paradoxical? That is, does it affirm a set of statements, each of which is highly credible, and yet which are incompatible? If it is paradoxical, what yields the paradox? If not, what does it tell us about the putative culprits that are implicated, belief and assertion?

1 . PA R A D OX I C A L I T Y A N D M O O R E ’ S PA R A D OX Moore’s Paradox is perplexing or puzzling, and the task is to explain how it might arise and how it is avoided. The puzzle is that a sentence that could be true is ‘heard’ as inconsistent, when asserted. Since the apparent inconsistency is among statements each of which has a plausible grounding, Moore’s Paradox can be presented in a paradox-like form. Colloquially, an instance of Moore’s Paradox, which takes off from a sentence of the form (1) p but I do not believe that p, appears to affirm one thing only to deny it, or to take it back. The suggestion of a contradiction when asserted (or even believed) does not lead us to reject a plausible assumption of the apparent paradox set, as is standard in diagnosing and treating a paradox; rather, it demands an explanation as to why it arises and why it is neither asserted nor believed.⁴ More specifically, the target question behind Moore’s Paradox is this: Why does assertion (or belief) transform a consistent, assertible sentence into a recognized (and unacceptable) inconsistency? ² Our account draws upon that in Jonathan E. Adler, Belief ’s Own Ethics (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2002), ch. 7. ³ For insightful reflections on Moore’s Paradox from the first-person point of view see Sydney Shoemaker, The First-Person Perspective and Other Essays (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), ‘Moore’s Paradox and Self-Knowledge’, ibid. 359–70, and Richard Moran, Authority and Estrangement: An Essay on Self-Knowledge (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001). ⁴ It bears noting, for what follows, that one author (Armour-Garb) of this paper allows for the acceptance of some contradictions. While he finds ‘dialetheism’ an attractive and plausible view, he recognizes the virtue of consistency and, thus, aims to investigate (and resolve) Moore’s Paradox with that norm in mind. For more on dialetheism, see Armour-Garb, Dividing the (Semantic) Paradoxes (Stanford: CSLI, forthcoming).

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Moore’s Paradox: Transparency of Belief

In order to answer this target question, we should note the two forms of Moore’s Paradox: A. p but I do not believe that p and B. p but I believe that not p.⁵ For what follows, we focus on the A form (herein, ‘MP’), as we take it to be more basic than the B form, which form, as we establish below (§2), while contradictory, is not paradoxical. The task, then, is to investigate its maximally generalized form, in order to determine the scope of Moore’s Paradox. There is, we maintain, a general form of MP, viz. (2) p, but I do not @ that p for ‘@’ an attitude verb. The ‘I’ in (2) is necessary, for only then are we ensured the self-recognition that is needed for the proposition in question to be attached to the thinker/speaker in such a way as to generate the symmetric, but negated, content with the second conjunct. As already noted, the paradox is, essentially, first-personal.⁶ We maintain that no other attitude save belief will yield an MP as it stands (leaving aside for now ‘as if’ belief attitudes, such as supposing, assuming, etc.), as no other attitude both links that attitude with assertion and has the unique property of transparency, which links a belief to what is believed: To believe that p is to represent p as being the case. In order to make the case, we return, briefly, to the aforementioned link (we will develop the point further, in §3). Sincerely to assert that p is both to put that p forward as true and to express your belief that p. This is no accident: By sincerely asserting something, you express that you believe it; to believe it is for it to be represented to you, the believer, as true; accordingly, to assert something is to put it forward as believed and, thus, as believed to be true. This explains why an instance of the A form is not (and, indeed, ought not ever to be) asserted:⁷ In asserting a sentence of the A [MP] form, e.g., ⁵ Anthony S. Gillies, ‘A New Solution to Moore’s Paradox’, Philosophical Studies, 105/3 (2001), 237–50, discusses the B form, though his analysis does not seem to leave room for the contrast between it and the A form. ⁶ What is crucial is self-recognition and self-ascription. One can, of course, construct a version of MP that relies on the first-personal report without the personal pronoun, as one can refer to oneself by name. Of course, such cases can be problematic (think of Kripke’s Pierre), so we ignore them here (although, for more on such cases, see Dale Jacquette, ‘Identity, Intensionality, and Moore’s Paradox’, Synthese, 123/2 (2000), 279–92). Since both self-recognition and self-ascription are guaranteed by ascriptions (or thoughts) that make use of the first-personal pronoun, we will employ it, for what follows. ⁷ In so claiming, we accept Rosenthal’s (‘Moore’s Paradox and Crimmins’s Case’, Analysis, 62/2 (2002), 167–71) and Hájek and Stoljar’s (‘Crimmins, Gonzales and Moore’, Analysis, 61/3 (2001), 208–13) treatment of Mark Crimmins’, case (‘I falsely believe that p’, Analysis, 52/3 (1192), 191), but maintain that the foregoing diagnoses it in a slightly different way.


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Jones is rich but I do not believe that Jones is rich, you express, in a single thought, that I believe that (Jones is rich, but I do not believe that Jones is rich). Thus, given that belief distributes over conjunction, and that all that is taking place is within a single, overt thought, we get I believe that Jones is rich and I believe that I do not believe that Jones is rich. This thought is the same as (i.e., is logically equivalent to) I believe that Jones is rich, I believe that I do not believe that Jones is rich. Recall that the transparency of belief holds that to believe that p is for it to be the case, for one’s point of view, that: p. From the first-person point of view, belief is factive, a key property of knowledge (if S knows that p then p).⁸ From the first-person point of view, then, the last statement implies I do not believe that Jones is rich. There is now an explicit contradiction with the previous statement, ‘I believe that Jones is rich.’ In simple and obvious steps, we then have derived a contradiction from the nature of assertion (and belief) alone, which is what is necessary for an explanation of why the assertion of Moore’s paradoxical sentence is heard as contradictory. Our analysis assumes a strong parallel between belief and assertion. Assertion expresses, not only implies, one’s belief; but it also the case that belief, like assertion, claims the truth of its content, even though that claim only becomes apparent, upon attending to one’s belief. Thus, one stands behind it as true, as the speaker stands behind his assertion as true.⁹ As no other attitude claims the truth of p, no other attitude is expressed by assertion, in which case no instance of (2), with ‘@’ a propositional attitude distinct from belief, will yield a contradiction with the first conjunct. With the other attitudes, we need to add the @ explicitly, as in (3) I desire [hope, guess, imagine] p, but I do not desire [hope, guess, imagine] p. But there is nothing puzzling here, since the starting assumption of the consistency of the sentence affirmed fails. (3) is, effectively, an instance of the explicitly contradictory form: C. @I p & ∼@I p. ⁸ Of course, we do not mean to imply that belief actually is factive. Rather, we mean that, in believing that p, the believer represents p as actually being the case. ⁹ We can then say that a speaker is entitled to assert that p (viz., that that p is assertible (for the speaker)) only if she is in a position that entitles her to claim that what she asserts is true.

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(3) and its ilk (for other attitudes) are contradictory sentences. So there is no discrepancy between the consistency of the sentence and the inconsistency ‘heard’ upon assertion. What of the B form, (4) I desire [hope, guess, imagine] p, but I desire [hope, guess, imagine] not p? The more general form here is D. @I p & @I ∼ p, with the ascribed propositions overtly contradictory. Sentences of the D form indicate the same attitude towards contradictory propositions, rather than an ascription of the same attitude toward a contradiction, and in the D form, we surrender the crucial implication of (4) that the agent grasps in a single first-personal thought his same attitude toward the contradictory propositions. But what of the attitude itself? Can we desire that p while simultaneously desiring its negation (in a single consciousness, as it were)? Assuming a preference for consistency, we can have no plan to implement, to act on, or to realize, both, as the result would be overtly self-defeating.¹⁰ But what of cases like this: I want Mary to come to the party (so I can meet her) but I don’t want [want not for] Mary to come to the party (because she’ll bring her unpleasant pal David)? Once the tacit restriction to a certain respect is factored in the contradiction dissipates. Or consider the following: (5) I desire to eat ice cream (because of the taste) but do not desire [or: want] to eat ice cream (because it is not good for me). This yields an inconsistency, if treated as of the C form. But, as is more plausible, it is believed as consistent—by speaker and hearer alike. That is, the sentence, when asserted, is ‘heard’ as inconsistent but is ‘treated’ (once interpreted) as consistent. So interpreted, it expresses a first-order desire to eat ice cream, and, as well, a second-order desire not to have that desire, a form of conflict that we discuss further below. Whether these are actually inconsistent or not, they are not, and could not be, cases of MP. For, even if contradictory, the contradiction arises from the sentence, rather than from the assertion of the sentence.¹¹ By contrast, in the ¹⁰ Cf. Michael Bratman, Intentions, Plans, and Practical Reason (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1987). ¹¹ It might seem that the analogy with (5) (and others like it) could be sustained by simply prefacing assertions of the (MPii ) form with the operator, ‘I believe that’. In fact, however, to assert ‘I believe that p’ is to express a hesitancy to assert that p as all-out believed. It is, rather, to put forward a qualified, or a guarded, assertion that p, which is to convey a conversationally induced weakening of the assertion of that p, rather than an unqualified expression of belief (consider, for example, ‘I believe that George is in the office but do not hold me to it’).


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case of belief, the contradictory nature of MP follows only from the MP sentence (in the A form) as asserted.¹² This enables us to distinguish the first form of MP from the second: An instance of the B form implies the inconsistency of what is believed, rather than inconsistencies of whether something is believed, as occurs in an instance of the A form.

2 . M O O R E ’ S PA R A D OX A N D VA R I E T I E S O F B E L I E F Thus far, we have marked a difference between belief and other attitudes, in support of our claim that no attitude but belief can (or: will) yield a MP, and by identifying both the features and the links that give rise to it. But ‘belief’ is a blanket term that covers divergent attitudes of different degrees of strength. As we will discuss below (§3), we treat belief as full belief, as only full belief possesses the needed transparency. Now, we consider a sharp contrast of belief with the other attitudes, which contrast emerges from a consideration of iterations of second-order attitudes. Consider the notorious datum that you can desire to smoke a cigarette but not desire that you desire to do so, i.e., that attending to your desire does not invariably yield a (second-order) desire, and so it goes for other attitudes (hoping, liking, etc.).¹³ Here we have a credible instantiation of (MP@), with ‘desire’ for @, i.e., (6) I desire that (I smoke this cigarette, but also that I do not desire that I smoke this cigarette). There is nothing contradictory about (6), whether asserted or thought, even if it is awkwardly expressed.¹⁴ Also, and corroboratively, there is no difference between (6) and its second-person attribution: (7) He desires that (he smoke that cigarette, but also that he does not have that desire). ¹² Here we have a clear difference of the (B) form. In the (B) form an asserted instance would be, effectively, to assert a contradiction, e.g., Jones is rich but I believe that Jones is not rich. Treating ‘I believe’ here not as a qualifier (a weakener) of the assertion, but (in its standard way) as transparent, the assertion reduces to Jones is rich and Jones is not rich. Of course, to infer such a contradiction would be a confusion, given the pragmatically implied weakening in the assertion of a self ascription of belief (cf. n. 11, above). ¹³ For a discussion of related issues, see John N. Williams, ‘Wittgenstein, Moorean Absurdity and Its Disappearance from Speech’, Synthese, 149/1 (2006), 225–54, §11. ¹⁴ In fact, it is not at all unusual for one to desire to have the opposed first-order desire, which is (roughly) an analogue of the B form, i.e., (6*) I desire that (I smoke this cigarette and that I have the desire not to smoke it).


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What is, trivially, not possible is only for the second-order desire to succeed, and for the first-order desire to remain. But if you believe that the #3 train stops at Franklin Avenue, and if you attend to that belief, then (unless you revise your original belief) you believe that you believe it, which can be captured by the following abstract form, (BI) B(p) (and attending to your belief that p) B(B(p)).¹⁵,¹⁶ What is involved is not a further endorsement of p, but is, rather, a non-optional judgment that one does so believe. That is, the recognition that it is true that one has the belief that p is thereby to believe that one believes that p. What then of degrees of belief—of uncertain, non-full, or partial belief ? There are a number of ways to think of these. We begin with (8) Probably p, but it’s not probable that p. This is just an instance of the explicitly contradictory D. If we move the negation in, i.e., to (9) Probably p, but probably not p, then we seem to have another instance of (8), given the negation law for probability: For the probability of p to be less than .5 is for the probability of ∼p to be greater than. 5. However, ‘not probable’ can be used as a really full negation, where one has no degree of belief in a proposition at all (Of course, this is forbidden in standard treatments).¹⁷ The following seem MPs as well, and so degrees of belief stand with belief, rather than with the other attitudes in this respect: (10) p, but it’s not probable that p, understood as something like (11) p, but the probability of p is less than half, which may (but need not) be heard as something like (12) p turned out to be true, despite its being improbable, ¹⁵ The same goes for (BE) B(B(p)) (and attending to your believing it) B(p) and (B∼E) B(∼B(p)) (and attending to your believing it) ∼B(p), as we hope is obvious. We should note that we employ the turnstile because, as is standardly used, it captures both truth preservation and inferential entitlement, both of which we apply to the present cases. Because constitutive of belief is only the judgment or claim that p, we think that these iterative belief principles do not run afoul of Williamson’s powerful criticisms of the assumption of luminosity (Knowledge and Its Limits, ch. 4). But we cannot address the issue here. ¹⁶ Given (BI), considerations from n. 4, and (BE), and assuming that we are attending to our beliefs (NB, even believing that we believe), we get, and so are entitled to infer (from the attending) (BE/O) B( p) B(B( p)). ¹⁷ So, for example, we have no degree of belief that Hamlet blinked an even number of times on the day of his sixteenth birthday, nor do we have a degree of belief in its negation.


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and which, if so heard, is not only consistent (as asserted), but is, in fact, familiar. What then of epistemically qualified assertion, as in (e.g.) (13) I’m pretty sure that (p, but I don’t believe that p [highly]) or (14) I’m pretty sure that (p, but it’s doubtful that p)? (13) either itself, or as asserted, is not just consistent, but possibly an implication like the following: ‘I’m [just] pretty sure that Jones is in Alaska, so, of course, I do not [fully] believe it.’ Likewise, (14) seems intelligibly understood as e.g. ‘I’m [just] pretty sure that Jones is in Alaska, though I have acquired reasons to doubt that he is.’ Or, better, with ‘because’ substituted for ‘though’. However, assertions as expressions of all-out belief (or acceptance as true) must represent themselves as satisfying a total relevant available evidence condition. The body of evidence grounding each conjunct must be the same body of evidence that purports to be the total relevant evidence. Not only is this evidence all that the agent has available, but in accepting that proposition the agent implies this is all the evidence necessary to establish it as true. Qualified assertions like (13) or (14) need not have the latter implication. They remain open to inquiry, to the discovery of further relevant evidence, and so to an alteration in the degree of qualification. They are failed assertions because the fundamental goal of assertion is to transmit truths about the world, rather than about one’s attitude toward it (except, of course, in the odd cases in which these are of interest to the hearer). So, for example, in asking after the whereabouts of Jones, what you want to know is where Jones is, not where the speaker thinks that he is. Accordingly, it does not satisfy your interest in being so informed, to learn only that the speaker is pretty sure. Also, notice that these examples fall in place with the other propositional attitudes, in having to explicitly represent the attitude in the sentence, and unlike either (full) belief or the basic case, A.¹⁸ But why is this so? We maintain that the reason turns on certain features of full belief, which have ramifications for other (familiar and neighboring) paradoxes.

3 . B E L I E F A N D T R A N S PA R E N C Y A central difference between full belief and partial, or qualified, belief (in addition to other attitudes) is that only the former is transparent to its content. Recall: For you fully to believe that p is for it to be true that p (from your first-personal ¹⁸ As a consequence, the logic of the statement is the same as the logic of the assertion—markedly unlike cases under (A).

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point of view).¹⁹ Thus, full belief is not essentially any strength of attitude—you ‘disquote’ from your attitude. Now consider any strength of belief-like attitude in an MP version: E. p, but I’m not very sure that p.²⁰ Although, in this stark form, the E form assertion seems puzzling, and so calls for the speaker to enter some explanation, such assertions (or their kin) are assertible, when construed literally. In order to see this, consider (15) Suzy loves me, but I’m having doubts about it. Nervous Ned explains: ‘All the signs are that Suzy loves me, and we get along great. But that hunk Tony just walked by, and I thought he might be attracted to Suzy.’ Assuming that Nervous Ned remains competent to judge his love-relations, his expressions of doubt allow for the assertibility of his (psuedo-) MP, and its literal acceptance: Both conjuncts of (15) can be true (i.e., true-from-Ned’s-point-of-view), and assertible, without paradox. We think that this result holds quite generally. It undermines any attempt to read full or all-out belief as too weak to imply the truth of what is believed (from the first-person point of view).²¹ For if belief is any strength of attitude, it should exclude doubt, as in the standard Peircean view.²²

4 . T H E N O R M O F A S S E RT I O N A N D B E L I EV I N G W H AT YO U K N OW Recall that the Unger-Williamson thesis maintains that, in asserting that p, one represents oneself as knowing that p. Along a different vein, Moore claims that ‘by asserting p positively, you imply, though you don’t assert, that you know that p.’²³ We are sympathetic to the claim that (sincerely) asserting that p represents oneself as knowing that p and, following Williamson, will assume ‘the Knowledge Rule’ that tracks it, i.e., the norm according to which you must assert that p only if you know it. Rather than arguing for the Knowledge Rule, we shall employ it, together with reflection on full belief and assertion. ¹⁹ By contrast, partial belief ‘marks’ a qualified, or guarded, assertion, rather than a bald assertion of that p itself. The uptake of partial belief is that it transforms putatively paradoxical utterances into non-paradoxical, even familiar, ones. Thus, consider a paradoxical (or incoherent) assertion of the form, ‘p but it is not very probable that p’. ²⁰ For a related variant of MP and a different diagnosis, see Byeong Lee, ‘Moore’s Paradox and Self-Ascribed Belief ’, Erkenntnis, 55/3 (2001), 359–70. ²¹ Here, and in what follows, we use ‘full’ and ‘all-out’ interchangeably. ²² Cf. Charles, Peirce ‘The Fixation of Belief ’, in his Essays in the Philosophy of Science, ed. V. Thomas (New York: The Bobbs-Merrill Co., 1957), 3–30. ²³ The Commonplace Book of G. E. Moore 1919–1953, ed. Casimir Lewy (London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd; New York: Macmillan Co., 1962), 125.


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The Knowledge Rule states: (KR) One must: Assert that p only if one knows that p, where ‘must’ expresses a kind of obligation and where the rule thus yields that only knowledge warrants assertion. As Moore, Unger, and Williamson note,²⁴ we seem to get just a variant of MP, with ‘believe’ replaced by ‘know’. Given (KR), this is easily explained: If only knowledge warrants assertion then to have warrant to assert the conjunction, (MP*) p but I do not know that p, is for the asserter to know that (p and that he does not know that p). Assuming that one can know a conjunction only if one knows each conjunct then, if one has warrant to assert an instance of (MP*) then one knows the first conjunct—that p. But one knows a conjunction only if it is true, which, via disquotation and the aforementioned norm, yields that one does not know that p. Thus, (KR), and the assumption that the speaker has warrant to assert an instance of (MP*), yields a contradiction, thereby supporting the paradoxicality (and, so, the unassertability) of (MP*).²⁵ The knowledge rule forbids the combination: one asserts that p when one does not know that p. Thus, if (KR) is in place, we are obliged to assert that p only if we know it; and, if we do not know it, we are obliged not to assert it. Of course, we violate (KR) all of the time, as Williamson is well aware. But the norm motivates an observation that will play a role in what follows: To make an assertion is to confer a responsibility (on oneself) for the truth of its content; to satisfy the rule of assertion, by having the requisite knowledge, is to discharge that responsibility, by epistemically ensuring the truth of the content.²⁶ Granting the obligation (which we do), it does, however, raise a question: Even if we must assert that p only if we know it, under what conditions do we take ourselves to be entitled to assert it? To be sure, one might reply that we are entitled to assert that p when we have warrant (and, thus, authority) to do so, and that we have warrant to assert it only when we know it. But an infinite regress ²⁴ Ibid. 277; Unger, Ignorance, 256–60; and Williamson, Knowledge and Its Limits, ch. 11. ²⁵ Beyond noting this key argument for (KR), the Unger-Williamson thesis, and a cautionary word, we shall just assume them. The cautionary word is this. Someone might naturally and sincerely (and perhaps dejectedly) assert, about the outcome of a fair lottery in which he holds a single ticket, (15∗ ) I’ll lose. In so asserting, the speaker surely does not imply that he knows that he will lose. However, in this case, it is presumed as mutually evident that a lottery is a gamble and that its outcome (like many kinds of future events) cannot be known in advance. So there is a mutual accommodation to allow for the assertion of (15∗ ), rather than for what is, strictly speaking, correct, viz., (15∗∗ ) I’m almost certain I’ll lose. ²⁶ Williamson ‘Knowing and Asserting’, 521–2.

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threatens, if our entitlement to assert depends on a confirmation of its warrant, which notions, of course, are not identical. This, however, is a mistake, although an important one. The knowledge rule, qua norm, is taken to be constitutive of the speech act of assertion. As such, it tells us the conditions under which we have the authority to perform that act. But it does not follow from (KR) that if we do not know that which we have just purported to have asserted (because it is false, say) then we have failed to assert it. We have so asserted, but we oughtn’t to have done so: We violated the rules, rather than failing to perform the speech act. But this does raise a question: How, and under what conditions, do we take ourselves to be entitled to assert? The answer, it seems, is clear, assuming (KR):²⁷ As we take ourselves to be entitled to assert that p only when our assertion conforms to (KR), we take ourselves to be entitled to so assert when we take ourselves to know that p, i.e., we take ourselves to be entitled to assert that which we believe that we know.²⁸,²⁹ Recall (BI)—that if one attends to her belief that p then she believes that she believes it. Now suppose that the thinker attends to her belief and that what she believes is presented to her as fully believed and, thus, as transparent. In that case, if she attends to her belief, so that its content appears to her transparently, then, we maintain, she believes herself to know that content, in which case she takes herself to be entitled to assert it, as it is presented to her as known, even if, in fact, it is false, she does not know it, etc. So, what is fully believed is thereby taken by the believer to be known; and, insofar it is so taken, it is taken to be assertible, in accordance with the Knowledge Rule.³⁰ If this is right then we have a ‘test’ for determining both full belief and the appearance (to a speaker) of assertability: When one attends to her belief and when the content of that belief is presented, to the believer, as transparent, then ²⁷ Williamson (ibid., passim) makes clear that he takes the knowledge rule to be the actual norm of assertion—the norm that we actually employ and that guides our practices of asserting. Accordingly, and assuming the norm, we take it to play a role in elucidating the actual concept of full belief. ²⁸ Williamson (ibid. 512–13) argues against a norm that bears a resemblance to our present proposal. The norm he rejects is the BK rule, (BKR) One must: assert that p only if one believes that one knows that p. It is important to note that the present proposal does follow Williamson in rejecting (BKR). The present proposal is to treat an element of (BKR) as related to (KR), by setting out a condition under which we take ourselves to be entitled to assert: We take ourselves to be entitled to assert that p when we have a full belief that p, and we have a full belief that p when, having attended to our belief, we come to believe that we know it. ²⁹ Notice, in addition, that, if correct, this is related support for the claim that full belief is not essentially any strength of attitude. ³⁰ One might object that, while it may well be true that we take ourselves to be entitled to assert something, when we take ourselves to know it, it is wildly implausible to assume that, when we attend to a belief, that belief is then represented to us as known, in a non-metaphorical way. This objection seems to be based on a mistake, for, when one attends to, or is guided by, a full belief that p, what she attends to, or is guided by, is that p, rather than one’s attitude toward it.


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she, in effect, believes that she knows it and so takes herself entitled to assert it, as it is what she fully believes. 5 . F U L L B E L I E F A N D FA L L I B I L I T Y Try as we might, and with only the best of intentions, we are liable to assert or believe things that are false and are liable to disbelieve things that are true. That is, just as the preface-assertion (‘at least one statement in this book is false’) is likely true, though not assertible, the same is true of (what we call) the fallibilist-assertion viz., (FA) I believe at least one false proposition. (For now, we put aside the pragmatic weakening implied by the ‘I believe’, and treat this as an accurate report in thought.)³¹ Since we have such an extensive and wide-ranging set of beliefs, it would be hubris not to be sure that some of them are false (we are, after all, not omniscient). So (FA) is likely—perhaps, inevitably—true, and, if it is believed, our full set of beliefs is inconsistent. But, if (FA) is asserted, we can run an argument that parallels the Preface Paradox, with the same disastrous results. We review it briefly, with especial attention to the standard presentation of the Preface Paradox, with which we begin.³²

5.1 The Preface Paradox In a version of the Preface Paradox applicable to all, Smith believes each of an enormous and diverse set of propositions: Bp1 , Bp2 , . . . , Bpn . Call the set of propositions that Smith believes ‘Smith’s corpus’. As Smith is minimally fallibilist, he thinks that some of the members of the his corpus are erroneous, i.e., B∼(p1 & p2 &, . . . & pn ). Call the proposition that he believes, the preface-proposition. What Smith takes to be erroneous—what his fallibilism appears to commit him to—is not one or another of the members of the corpus; rather, it is that he thinks of the full range of members of the corpus as likely to contain an error. His fallibilist basis for his inference to the preface-proposition is second-order—a reflection on his believing (the members of) the corpus, and not on the content—the particulars —of what he believes. ³¹ See nn. 11 and 12. ³² D. C. Makinson, ‘The Paradox of the Preface’, Analysis, 25/6 (1964), 205–7.

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The paradox depends on assuming that the person not only fully believes each pi , but the fallibility-proposition, as well. If so, the person’s beliefs are inconsistent. However, it is standard to claim that, whereas inconsistent beliefs could be rational to maintain, only an outright belief in a contradiction is forbidden: B[(p1 & p2, &, . . .& pn ) & ∼(p1 & p2 &, . . .& pn )]. We can avoid this last step if we reject a number of assumptions—most prominently, a conjunction rule (to believe each of a set of propositions is to believe their conjunction). However, this route is not open to us because, given the transparency of belief, we can ‘detach’ from the ‘B’ operator, and then we do get the out-and-out contradiction: (p1 & p2, &, . . .& pn ) & ∼(p1 & p2 &, . . .& pn ) by logical equivalence (of p1 ,. . .,pn and p1 &. . .&pn ). Instead of rejecting the conjunction rule, we reject the fallibility proposition—no one all-out believes that one of her beliefs is false.³³ In a natural framework of assertion, the person asserts each sentence that expresses these propositions—including his denial of their joint truth (viz., the fallibility-proposition). In the context of assertion, the conjunction principle holds: There is no significant contrast between a conjunction of assertions and an assertion of a conjunction.³⁴ Now while we do find people saying things like ‘Blah-blah-blah, though of course I’m fallible, I could be mistaken,’ if we take this expression in a woodenly literal way, rather than as a rhetorical device, we seem to have an overt expression of belief that is unassertible because blatantly inconsistent: The speaker claims a set of propositions (simultaneously) true, and then denies it.³⁵ Of course, as a practical matter, we are not held to all our assertions over time. We forget, and we change our mind without in each case explicitly having to withdraw a distant assertion. The connection between the Preface Paradox and Moore’s Paradox is even tighter, given that disbelief implies a lack of belief.³⁶ But, in addition, a problem ³³ Like Moore’s Paradox, as well as (FA), the Preface Paradox is essentially first-personal. To see this, consider the fact that all or most of us can (and do) all-out believe that at least one of another cognizer’s beliefs will be false. And this is so even though we may not know which ones are the to-be-rejected culprits. Something similar applies, when we take a third person attitude towards ourselves qua believers. When we do, we find that we can say, for example, that at least some of our beliefs are likely false. Thanks to an anonymous referee, who pressed us to address this issue. ³⁴ Michael Dummett, Frege: Philosophy of Language (2nd edn. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1981), 336. ³⁵ We assume, of course, that, in asserting, a speaker represents himself as recognizing explicit relations like negation. ³⁶ So that the (B) version implies the (A) version.


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emerges: Whereas the unassertibility of Moore’s Paradox corresponds to an incoherence of thought, the Preface Paradox develops a line of coherent thought. Thus, many follow Makinson in taking the right response to the Preface Paradox to be that one can rationally be involved in (recognizable) inconsistency.³⁷ Accordingly, in order consistently to resolve the Preface Paradox, one must resolve it in such a way as to explain the coherence of the preface-assertion without its assertability.

5.2 A Fallibilist Paradox³⁸ As fallibilists, we recognize that it is overwhelmingly likely that some of our beliefs are false. Thus, like the preface-assertion we are faced with the fallibilist-assertion (FA), and, with it, the contradiction in belief that appears to ensue. This is the Fallibilist Paradox. In both paradoxes, we seem faced with a dilemma: We have derived a contradictory belief from a collection of beliefs each of which we accept.³⁹

5.3 Resolving the Preface and the Fallibilist Paradoxes Our resolution consists of two related parts, already suggested and implicit in our account of Moore’s Paradox: First, the fallibility-proposition is not all-out believed and, second, the justification for the fallibility-proposition, and the proper expression of fallibility, is second-order: It is to cast doubt on our perfection as believers, not to cast doubt on what we believe (viz., the first-order propositions).⁴⁰ There is no inconsistency in (fully) believing each of a set of propositions, and having a high degree of belief that not all of them are true—indeed, something like the latter follows from the conjunction principle for probability, under very ³⁷ Cf., e.g. Graham Priest, ‘What is So Bad about Contradictions?’, Journal of Philosophy, 95/8 (1998), 410–26. It bears pointing out that dialetheists, while they believe that some contradictions are both true and assertible, do not accept that all contradictions are true and assertible. Thus, accepting dialetheism by no means entails that dialetheists will (must, should) take the relevant instance of (e.g.) a Moore-style sentence to be genuinely inconsistent. Indeed, dialetheists, like their consistentist kins, subscribe to a consistency-governed norm; they simply maintain that there are reasons for accepting some contradictions. For the details, see Graham Priest, J. C. Beall, and Bradley Armour-Garb (eds.) The Law of Non-Contradiction: New Philosophical Essays (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004). ³⁸ The indefinite article is used in recognition that there is already a‘fallibility paradox’ (cf. Keith Lehrer and Kihyeon Kim, ‘The Fallibility Paradox’, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 50, suppl. (1990) 99–107). Ours is distinct from theirs, but indebted to their presentation (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 2004). ³⁹ Although the presentation of the paradox is fairly standard, one might balk at the assumptions that drive it. To assuage the reader’s worry, consider the following: If one accepts the prefaceassertion and the fallibilist-assertion then a contradiction can be adduced, from the fact that, for each proposition that we believe, qua belief, we believe it to be true. ⁴⁰ See also Simon Evnine, ‘Learning from One’s Mistakes: Epistemic Modesty and the Nature of Belief ’, Pacific Philosophical Quarterly, 82/2 (2001), 157–77.

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weak conditions. Moreover, the denial of all-out belief fits with one’s treating the fallibility-proposition as an epistemic possibility that all of one’s beliefs are correct.⁴¹ This, in turn, serves to explain why the fallibility-proposition is not all-out believed (though it may be partially believed) and so why it is not judged to be assertible by the believer, even if, in fact, it is true. Can one take oneself to know the fallibility-proposition? We maintain that one cannot, since (i) one will take it to be epistemically possible, even if wildly unlikely, that all of her beliefs are true, and (ii) knowledge implies that it is not possible (from one’s point of view) that one is mistaken. We grant that it is overwhelmingly likely (from your point of view) that at least one of your beliefs is false. But we deny that there is any basis for detaching from this subjective probability to the all-out belief that the fallibility-proposition is true. The situation parallels that of a fair lottery: There is no ground to detach from the overwhelming probability that one will lose (with a single ticket) to take it as simply true (as if the lottery winner had already been announced) that one will lose. That said, there does seem to be something that we believe and, thus, something that we take ourselves entitled to assert. But, as our belief is merely partial, e.g., of the sort that it is likely that at least one of the sentences of my book is false (though I know not which it is), the assertion that expresses such a (partial) belief is guarded (or qualified) as well. The same holds for the fallibilist-assertion: It is guarded or qualified because what it expresses is a partial belief, which lacks the transparency that is a hallmark of full belief. But the (qualified or guarded) assertion that at least one of the sentences of my book is false is, itself, neither paradoxical nor problematic, even given the full belief in each of the sentences of the book. Thus, the paradox is diagnosed— it arises from the false assumption that we fully believe the fallibilist-proposition—and treated— we can fully believe our qualified belief, which belief thus does not (and, indeed, cannot) yield paradox. We have claimed that a key to resolving these paradoxes is to resist the temptation to read such beliefs (like the fallibility proposition) as full beliefs. A further reason for not treating the fallibility-proposition as all-out believed is that, contra the consequences of the Preface Paradox, where full belief in the content of each of the sentences of the author’s book is retained, in the case of the Fallibilist Paradox, the analogous belief casts doubt back on the individual beliefs. So, for example, suppose that, after grading the final exams for your logic class, you discover that no students have scored below 90 per cent, which is far above the class average. You consider each student and provide reasons for thinking that student to be honest and so conclude, of each of the many students, that that ⁴¹ Indeed, if one believes, of each of his beliefs, that it is true, he will not (and cannot, without contradiction) deny the epistemic possibility that all of what he believes—including their conjunction—are true.


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student did not cheat. But the class average is just too high and so you conclude that at least some of the students must have cheated, in spite of the fact that you do not have evidence that would enable you to convict any particular student. It seems then that a dilemma ensues, for it seems that you (fully) believe each of the students to be honest but you also believe that someone has cheated. As in the previous cases, the dilemma is resolved by noticing that you would not (or: should not) all-out believe that each of your students have performed the exam honestly. Accordingly, this case is contrasted with the Preface Paradox, where the warrant for the preface-assertion is simply the high probability that one of p1 , p2 , . . . ,pn is false, which licenses no inference to the preface-assertion itself. In the case of the students, there is a basis for an inductive inference: The best explanation for the coincidence is that some students cheated (not merely that this is probable).⁴² In the case of the exam, once you conclude that something has gone wrong—that it is overwhelmingly likely that someone has cheated—you find that you can no longer fully believe that each of the students are honest test takers, and this is the case consistent with your fully believing that some of your students have cheated.

6 . C O N C LU S I O N Our account implies the controversial claim that instances of the following are variants of MP and, thus, are paradoxical, if asserted or fully believed: p, but I lack sufficient evidence that p. p, but my reasons do not establish that p. Any hearer would refuse to accept the former conjunct, given an assertion of the latter. (Recall previous discussion that assertion and all-out belief both claim to satisfy a condition of total relevant available evidence as representative of the possible non-misleading evidence.) For another example, consider (16) There are no misspellings in my book, and I have not checked the last section. Reasons that establish the truth of p would normally be taken as reasons sufficient to know that p. Reflection on these examples amounts then to an extension, as well as to a corroboration, of our basic analysis. More generally, it seems that any statement of the form p but I M that p, ⁴² Analogously, while you do not all-out believe (FA) (you partially believe it), your partial belief does not undermine the epistemic status afforded to the content of what you fully believe.

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if all-out believed, will be a version of Moore’s Paradox, if M serves to cancel the grounds or reasons for fully believing that p. But no paradox ensues, or is heard, from an assertion of a qualified form, such as I am almost certain that p but I do not know that p. This, we maintain, provides further support for our diagnosis of Moore’s Paradox and, with it, the factivity of full belief, from the first-person point of view.

PART IV M O O R E ’ S PA R A D OX AND CONSCIOUSNESS


8 Consciousness, Reasons, and Moore’s Paradox André Gallois

On a number of occasions Wittgenstein discusses what he calls Moore’s Paradox. Moore himself discussed the phenomenon Wittgenstein so labels in his paper, ‘Russell’s ‘‘Theory of Descriptions’’ ’, and in a reply to Charles Stevenson.¹ Moore’s own treatment of the paradox is perfunctory. He clearly thinks of the problem posed by examples of Moore paradoxicality as having minor significance with a relatively straightforward solution. Evidently Wittgenstein disagreed. Norman Malcolm reports that Wittgenstein thought of Moore’s Paradox as Moore’s great discovery. Wittgenstein was right to attach the importance he did to the puzzling phenomenon Moore identified.² One reason he was right to do so is, far from being an isolated logical curiosity, it plays a role in a large number of central philosophical issues. I propose to investigate the bearing of Moore’s Paradox on some aspects of the relation between consciousness and having reasons. Here is how I will proceed. In the first section, after, all too briefly, discussing the distinguishing feature of Moore-paradoxical statements and thoughts, I identify an instance of Moore-paradoxicality that directly links Moore-paradoxicality to consciousness. In the same section I go on to say why a standard treatment of Moore-paradoxicality fails to yield a persuasive account of that instance. In the second section I distinguish between two ways of attributing a reason for being in a psychological state with propositional content such as believing, imagining, or intending. In the third section I elaborate on the link between Moore-paradoxicality and the thesis, which I defend, that only consciously held beliefs can supply reasons. The fourth section is devoted to exploring the link ¹ G. E. Moore, ‘Russell’s ‘‘Theory of Descriptions’’ ’ in Philosophical Papers (London: Allen and Unwin 1959), 151–95; Moore’s discussion of the paradox is on pp. 172–7. His later discussion of the paradox is on pp. 542–3 of P. A. Schlipp (ed.), The Philosophy of G. E. Moore (La Salle, Ill.: Open Court, 1942). ² To entitle that phenomenon ‘Moore’s Paradox’ is somewhat misleading in something like the way ‘Naturalistic Fallacy’ is misleading. Just as the alleged mistake entitled the Naturalistic Fallacy is no fallacy so ‘Moore’s Paradox’ labels a phenomenon which, however puzzling, is not a paradox. At least it is not a paradox in the sense of presenting something which is evidently true that seems to imply something evidently false.

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between Moore-paradoxicality and what I call the deletion and augmentation functions of consciously held belief. What emerges is a connection between consciously held belief having those functions, and one being able to form an integrated view of the world. In the fifth section I attempt to explain what is meant by an integrated view of the world by invoking a comparison with integration in fiction. The sixth section provides an account of the distinction between two ways of attributing a reason introduced in the second. Finally, in the last section I utilize the materials developed in the preceding ones to give an account of the target example of Moore paradoxicality relating to consciousness.

1 . M O O R E - PA R A D OX I C A L I T Y Let us use ‘Moore-paradoxicality’ to label a feature that is shared in common by instances of, among others, the following schemas: (1) P, but I do not believe that P, (2) P, but I believe that not-P. ³ What is it about (1) and (2) that would lead us to classify them as Mooreparadoxical?⁴ Here we need to be careful. In one way it is unfortunate that ‘Moore-paradoxicality’ has become such an inevitable label for the feature Moore called our attention to since it strongly suggests that the thoughts and statements possessing it, or sentences expressing those thoughts and used to make those statements, are, in virtue of doing so, automatically defective. We should resist that suggestion. Whatever we think of eliminativism about propositional attitudes there is nothing defective in an avowed eliminativist’s assertion that eliminativism is true, but not believed by her to be so. Likewise there is nothing defective about a dialethist who believes in true contradictions producing an instance of (2). So ‘Moore-paradoxicality’ should not be taken to pick out a feature whose possession automatically indicates its possessor is defective. Since that is so we should not identify Moore paradoxicality with a certain form of irrationality, or bad type of inconsistency. We need to separate what Moore-paradoxicality is from a diagnosis of why it is usually a bad thing to be. What then is Moore-paradoxicality? We may be tempted to say that to be Moore-paradoxical is just to be an instance of (1) or (2), and leave it at that. Here too we should resist temptation. Additional examples of Moore-paradoxicality are provided by: ³ I am making the assumption that there is some feature, other than a disjunctive one whose disjuncts are not significantly connected, that (1) or (2) have in common that deserves to be called Moore-paradoxicality. ⁴ Strictly it is instances of (1) or (2) that are Moore-paradoxical. However, since a statement or thought will be Moore-paradoxical in virtue of instancing a certain schema I will refer to a schema of the appropriate type as Moore-paradoxical.

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(3) P, but I am not at all justified in believing that P, (4) P, but I do not know that P, (5) P, but it might not be the case that P, and by; (6) P, but it is not at all likely that P. Despite this proliferation we may well think that we can discern the nature of Moore-paradoxicality even if we restrict our attention to (1) and (2). As a number have pointed out, Moore-paradoxicality seems to arise in the most basic way at the level of thought. When we ask what makes thinking any of (1) or (2) Moore paradoxical many have found the following answer attractive. Consider (1). Belief plausibly distributes over conjunction. That is, believing both P and Q implies believing P and believing Q. Some hold that, at any rate, conscious belief iterates. That is, consciously believing P implies believing that one believes P. In addition, suppose that the following rationality condition holds for belief. Believing that P implies not believing that not-P. If distribution, iteration, and the rationality condition hold for conscious belief then it is impossible for there to be a belief in an instance of (1) that is consciously held.⁵ What, on this view, makes (1) Moore-paradoxical is that a conscious belief in (1) is ruled out. Advocates of this account of the Moore-paradoxicality of (1) allow that the principles dictating the impossibility of consciously believing (1) do not rule out consciously believing (2). What those principles imply is that a conscious believer of (2) has inconsistent beliefs. By distribution, consciously believing P, but I believe Not-P implies consciously believing P and believing that one believes Not-P. In turn, consciously believing P implies believing that one believes that P. So, one who consciously believes P has the belief that she believes P as well as the belief that she does not believe P. Call an account of Moore-paradoxicality along these lines the propositional attitude account.⁶ We may reasonably hope to extend the propositional attitude account to cover (3)–(6). Clearly, (3) and (4) implicate belief.⁷ Moreover, on ⁵ The argument for this being so goes as follows. Suppose you consciously believe some instance of (1). Say you believe both that Moore is a philosopher and that you do not believe that Moore is a philosopher. By distribution you consciously believe that Moore is a philosopher. So by iteration you believe that you believe that Moore is a philosopher. But by distribution you also believe that you do not believe that Moore is a philosopher. So by the rationality condition you do not believe that you believe that Moore is a philosopher. ⁶ The above version of the propositional attitude account is given, without endorsement, by Roy Sorenson in ‘Moore’s Problem with Iterated Belief ’, Philosophical Quarterly, 50/198 ( Jan. 1998), 28–43. Somewhat different versions of the same account are defended by Sidney Shoemaker in a number of papers reprinted in his collection The First Person Perspective and Other Essays (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), and Uriah Kriegel in ‘Moore’s Paradox and the Structure of Conscious Belief ’, Erkenntnis, 61/1 (2004), 99–121. ⁷ That said, how to extend the propositional attitude account to cover, for example, (4) is by no means obvious. Consciously believing (4) does not imply believing that one does not believe

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one natural reading (5) and (6) may be taken to do so as well. After all the modality in (5) is plausibly epistemic, as is arguably the probabilistic estimate implied by (6). Despite that, the propositional attitude account should be rejected as a comprehensive account of Moore-paradoxicality. As Moore in effect pointed out, there are examples of Moore paradoxicality that do not, directly or indirectly, involve the denial or attribution of a propositional attitude. For example there is as much reason to hold that: (7) ‘Snow is white’ does not mean that: snow is white, is Moore-Paradoxical as there is to so regard any of (1)–(6) as being so.⁸ Moreover, if (7) is Moore paradoxical, so is: (8) Napoleon is not called ‘Napoleon’. What then make all of (1)–(8) Moore-paradoxical? Suppose we agree that beliefs, sentences, statements, and singular terms are, in some suitably broad sense, representations, and, in that light ask what, if anything (1) to (8) have in common relevant to characterizing Moore-paradoxicality. Compare the following instances of (1): (1∗ ) Syracuse is in New York, but I do not believe that Syracuse is in New York and: (2∗ ) I believe that Syracuse is not in New York, but Syracuse is in New York, with the Moore-paradoxical: (7) ‘Snow is white’ does not mean that: snow is white, and; (8) Napoleon is not called ‘Napoleon’. that P. Tim Williamson in Knowledge and Its Limits (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000) has attempted to account for the Moore paradoxicality of assertions of instances of (4) by appealing to a constitutive rule governing assertion. Since Williamson’s account rests on such a rule it is not obvious how it would apply to the Moore paradoxicality of thinking an instance of (4). ⁸ In ‘Russell’s ‘‘Theory of Descriptions’’ ’, Moore does not initially give instances of any of (1) or (2) to illustrate what has come to be known as Moore paradoxicality. Instead he gives as an opening example ‘The sentence ‘At least one person is the King of France’ means that at least one person is the king of France.’ He observes that it would be a mistake to think that the last mentioned sentence is a tautology. Later, using ‘Z’ to stand in for the sentence ‘At least one person is the King of France’ Moore remarks ‘Hence if we were to assert ‘‘Z does not mean that at least one person is the King of France’’ we should imply that Z can be properly used to mean what, on the second occasion on which we are using it, we are using it to mean’. He continues ‘To make our assertion by the use of this language is consequently absurd for the same reason [my italics] for which it is absurd to say such a thing as ‘‘I believe he has gone out, but he has not’’ ’. Moore, ‘‘Russell’s ‘Theory of Descriptions’’ ’, 173–5.

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Consider sentence (7). Sentence (7) contains the sentence ‘Snow is white’ mentioned on the left, and used on the right. Sentence (7) says something true only if, in virtue of having a meaning, it represents something being so. Moreover sentence (7) represents something being so only if any, used rather than mentioned, sentence it contains represents something being so. No sentence that lacks a meaning represents something being so. Hence, (7) represents something to be so which, if it is so, fails to represent anything to be so. Sentence (8) conforms to the same template. Sentence (8) represents something to be so only if the name ‘Napoleon’ represents someone that sentence (8) says it does not represent. Now consider (1∗ ) and (2∗ ). Taking thoughts to represent things being so we can say this about (1∗ ) and (2∗ ). A thought that (1∗ ) represents Syracuse as being in New York, but also represents the thinker of that thought as not representing, in thought, Syracuse as being in New York. Likewise, a thought that (2∗ ) represents Syracuse as being in New York, but also represents its thinker as having a thought that represents the opposite. This suggests an account of Moore-paradoxicality which may be called the representational account. Applied to our initial examples of Moore-paradoxicality, (1) and (2), the representational account tells us that thinking (1) or (2) implies having thoughts that represent in conflicting ways. For example thinking: (1) P, but I do not believe that P, implies having a thought that represents P being so, and also having the thought that one does not so represent P. Asserting (7) by uttering sentence (7) requires using a linguistic representation that, according to (7), fails to represent. Asserting (8) by means of uttering sentence (8) likewise requires using a name to represent an individual who, according to (8) is not so represented. No doubt the representational account could be more precisely elaborated. I shall not attempt to do so since it is, at best, unclear how it would apply to the following example of Moore-paradoxicality which plays a major role in the remainder of the paper: (9) P, but I only non-consciously believe that P. Consider this instance of (9): (9∗ ) Syracuse is in New York, but I only non-consciously believe that Syracuse is in New York. Compare (9∗ ) with the following paradigm of Moore paradoxicality: (1∗ ) Syracuse is in New York, but I do not believe that Syracuse is in New York. Here is an undefended, but, it seems to me, compelling intuition. Whatever renders stating or thinking (9∗ ) unacceptable is the same feature that renders

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stating or thinking (1∗ ) unacceptable. If that is right, we have reason to classify (9∗ ) with (1∗ ) as Moore-paradoxical. The Moore-paradoxicality of (9∗ ) is not easily accommodated by the representational account. One who thinks (9∗ ) has a thought that represents Syracuse as being in New York. The problem with applying the representational account to (9∗ ) is this. (9∗ ) does not imply that the same thinker either does not entertain a thought representing Syracuse as being in New York, or entertains a thought representing Syracuse as not being in New York. On the contrary, (9∗ ) only implies that a thinker of (9∗ ) does entertain a thought, albeit a non-conscious one, representing Syracuse as being in New York. We might try to extend the representational account to cover (9∗ ) by invoking the following argument. One who thinks that (9∗ ) not only represents Syracuse as being in New York, but also consciously represents Syracuse as being there. Hence, one who thinks that (9∗ ) consciously represents that Syracuse is in New York while denying that she is so representing the location of Syracuse. This brings us back to the propositional attitude account of Mooreparadoxicality. According to the version of that account we looked at earlier, consciously believing (1∗ ) is precluded by distribution: belief distributes over conjunction; iteration: believing that P implies believing that one believes P, and the rationality condition: believing that not-P implies not believing that P. Whatever one thinks of the plausibility of the iteration and rationality conditions, they do not exclude believing (9∗ ). One who believes (9∗ ) does believe that she believes that Syracuse is in New York. So, there is no prospect of deriving from consciously believing (9∗ ) that one who does so fails to believe that she believes Syracuse is in New York. If we dispense with the rationality condition but retain distribution and iteration, we can at least show that consciously believing (1∗ ) implies having inconsistent beliefs⁹. Can we likewise show, by invoking only distribution and iteration, that consciously believing (9∗ ) implies having inconsistent beliefs? It all depends on the version of iteration we employ. There are the following options: I1: Consciously believing that P implies believing that one believes that P¹⁰. I2: Consciously believing that P implies consciously believing that one believes that P. ⁹ The argument goes as follows. By distribution consciously believing (1∗ ) implies believing that Syracuse is in New York, and believing that one does not believe that Syracuse is in New York. By iteration believing that Syracuse is in New York implies believing that one believes that Syracuse is in New York. ¹⁰ This is the strongest version of iteration that so-called higher order thought (HOT) theories of consciousness are typically committed to.

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I3: Consciously believing that P implies believing that one consciously believes that P. I4: Consciously believing that P implies consciously believing that one consciously believes that P. Combining distribution with I1 fails to result in consciously believing (9∗ ) implying having inconsistent beliefs. Applying distribution and I1 to (9∗ ) will only yield the following. Consciously believing (9∗ ) implies believing that one believes that Syracuse is in New York, and believes that one only non-consciously believes that Syracuse is in New York. Nothing is inconsistent about that combination of beliefs. The same goes for I2. We can, at most, extract from distribution and I2 that consciously believing (9∗ ) implies consciously believing that one believes that Syracuse is in New York, and consciously believes that one only non-consciously believes that Syracuse is in New York. Again there is no inconsistency of belief. I3 and I4 can be used to show that consciously believing (9∗ ) implies having inconsistent beliefs. The problem with using I3 to explain what is wrong with consciously believing the Moore-paradoxical (9∗ ) is more subtle. I3 would serve that purpose if it could be used to show that consciously believing (9∗ ) implies having an irrational belief. It cannot. The problem is this. What we want is an account of Moore-paradoxicality that shows why it is problematic to consciously endorse (9∗ )¹¹. Let us ask: what follows about consciously believing (9∗ ) from distribution and I3? Just this. Consciously believing (9∗ ) implies having the possibly non-conscious belief that you consciously believe that Syracuse is in New York together with the conscious belief that you only non-consciously believe that Syracuse is in New York. Now let us pose a further question. If distribution and I3 are both true, and you consciously believe that (9∗ ), then, if you are fully rational, what else can you be brought to acknowledge? Since you consciously believe that you nonconsciously believe Syracuse is in New York, you can be brought to acknowledge that you non-consciously believe that Syracuse is in New York. Hence, you can be brought to acknowledge that you do not consciously believe that Syracuse is in New York. You consciously believe that Syracuse is in New York. It follows from I3 that you, it may be non-consciously, believe that you consciously believe that Syracuse ¹¹ Earlier I distinguished an account of what, for example, it is to have a Moore paradoxical thought from what, in those cases where it is wrong, is wrong with having a Moore paradoxical thought. We need to draw such a distinction in the case of even the paradigm of Moore paradoxicality: P, and I do not believe that P. As we saw there are instances of that schema, such as the eliminativist’s: there are no beliefs, and I do not believe that there are no beliefs, that do not result in any defective thought. In contrast, there are, so far as I can see, no non-defective instances of: P, but I only non-consciously believe that P.

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is in New York. Does it follow that, if you are rational, you can be brought to acknowledge that you have that conscious belief ? That would only follow if you consciously believe that you consciously believe that Syracuse is in New York. Unless, on pain of irrationality, you can be brought to acknowledge that you do consciously believe that Syracuse is in New York, there is no obvious reason why it would be irrational to have the inconsistent beliefs implicit, according to distribution and I3, in consciously believing (9∗ ). What we need for conscious belief in (9∗ ) to incur not only inconsistent beliefs, but irrationality is I4. The trouble is that I4 is implausibly strong. The obvious problem with it is the infinite regress of beliefs it generates. No doubt a resourceful defender of the propositional attitude account would have responses to the above objections.¹² I will not attempt to anticipate those responses. My disquiet with the propositional attitude account has a different source. It is this. Suppose a believer Sam comes to consciously believe: (9∗ ) Syracuse is in New York, but I only non-consciously believe that Syracuse is in New York. We who are not prepared to endorse instances of: (9) P, but I only non-consciously believe that P, are in a position to recognize that Sam does consciously believe that (9∗ ). Hence, we are in a position to recognize that Sam does consciously believe that Syracuse is in New York. So, assuming I3, we are in a position to recognize that Sam has inconsistent beliefs. How, using the propositional attitude account, might we show Sam that he has inconsistent beliefs? Obviously we begin by pointing out to Sam that, whether or not he consciously believes that Syracuse is in New York, he at any rate consciously believes (9∗ ). Having secured that concession, it should, using the propositional attitude account, be an easy matter to persuade Sam that he consciously believes that Syracuse is in New York. The difficulty is that if Sam is willing to endorse an instance of (9) such as (9∗ ), he will have no trouble endorsing the following instance of (9): (9∗ ), but I only non-consciously believe that (9∗ ). Perhaps, on pain of irrationality, Sam can be brought to acknowledge that if he consciously believes (9∗ ), he has inconsistent beliefs. That is no help in showing Sam what is wrong with (9∗ ), unless he can be brought to acknowledge that he does consciously believe that (9∗ ). Again, unless we have recourse to I4, it is hard to see how the propositional attitude account can be used to show Sam the error of his ways. I am suggesting that the propositional attitude account is wanting in that it cannot be used to show someone like Sam who finds nothing amiss in ¹² For example, we might try weakening I4 to: consciously believing P implies being in a position to consciously believe that one consciously believes P.

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consciously believing (9∗ ) that there is something amiss.¹³ In doing so I am implicitly imposing what may be called a first-person adequacy condition on an account of the Moore-paradoxicality of: (9) P, but I only non-consciously believe that P. According to that condition an account of the Moore-paradoxicality of (9) should enable anyone who consciously believes an instance of (9) such as (9∗ ) to identify what has gone wrong.¹⁴ I take it to be a virtue of the account of the Mooreparadoxicality of (9) given in the closing section that it satisfies the first-person adequacy condition. Whether or not that is a virtue, the account will, hopefully, have a further one. Developing it will throw light on the relation between two of the most significant features of our mental lives: being conscious and having reasons.

2 . AT T I T U D E A N D C O N T E N T- R E L AT E D R E A S O N S Suppose, you are in the power of a tyrant who controls an efficient team of mind readers called the thought inspectors. You will be horribly tortured unless you come to believe that the tyrant discovered Neptune. If you do not acquire that manifestly false belief, the thought inspectors will, almost certainly, detect your failure to do so, and act to your great detriment. Do you have a reason to believe the tyrant discovered Neptune? Certainly, in one sense you have every reason to self-induce that belief. You have every reason to resort to hypnotism, brainwashing, reading bad works, or whatever else it takes to get yourself to believe the tyrant discovered Neptune. In another sense you have no reason to ¹³ It is important to distinguish between Sam finding something amiss in consciously believing (9∗ ), and finding something amiss with consciously believing (9∗ ). Sam consciously believes (9∗ ). As noted, the propositional attitude account can be used to show Sam what is wrong with consciously believing (9∗ ). So, we may assume he accepts that there is something wrong with consciously believing (9∗ ). Since Sam does consciously believe (9∗ ) he ought, if he is rational, to concede that there is something amiss. Since it is open to Sam to, at least, remain agnostic about whether he consciously believes (9∗ ), the propositional attitude account is impotent to explain why, in consciously believing (9∗ ), Sam ought to find something amiss. ¹⁴ We might ask: gone wrong with what? The difficulty of answering that question is, in my view, symptomatic of something that lies at the heart of Moore-paradoxicality. Someone who consciously believes (9) ought to find something amiss with doing so. Suppose we ask such a believer what is amiss. There seem to be two candidate answers. The first is that (9∗ ) is true. Clearly, that will not do. There is nothing, in the relevant sense, amiss with Syracuse being in New York, and the believer failing to believe that it is. At first sight, more promising is the answer that the believer consciously believes that (9∗ ). We have already seen, in effect, why that answer will not do. Suppose our believer in (9∗ ) ought, on pain of irrationality, to find something amiss with consciously believing (9∗ ), but does not. In that case, there should be something we can call Sam’s attention to which will alert her to what has gone wrong. Without strain Sam consciously believes that Syracuse is in New York without conceding that she does. So she will find nothing difficult about consciously believing (9∗ ) without conceding that she does. Hence, we cannot alert Sam to what has gone wrong by pointing out that she consciously believes (9∗ )

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believe the tyrant discovered Neptune. It is perfectly acceptable for you to report on your situation by saying something like the following. Even though I have no reason to believe the tyrant discovered Neptune, I have every reason to bring it about that I hold that belief.¹⁵ In this case there seems to be a straightforward way of marking the relevant distinction. In the above scenario you have no reason that bears on its truth to acquire the belief that the tyrant discovered Neptune. The only reason you have for so believing is one that bears on your self-interest. However, that way of marking the distinction will not generalize to the next case. For a variety of reasons it is greatly in your interest to join the society of bottle top collectors. Unfortunately, you regard collecting bottle tops as a deeply irrational activity, and the society, which includes among its members some thought inspectors from the previous example, will admit only those who have the desire to perform that activity. You can, it seems, correctly say the following. I have no reason to want to collect bottle tops even though I have every reason to cultivate the desire to do so. As in the previous case, in one sense, you have every reason to have an attitude towards a proposition P which, in another sense, you have no reason to have towards the same proposition. However, in this case we cannot mark the contrast as the contrast between having a reason to acquire a desire that bears on self-interest rather than one that bears on the truth of that desire. Desires cannot be true or false. Here is a final example, familiar from the literature, illustrating the distinction between attitude and content-related reasons. You have a strong incentive to intend to perform some act even though you have an equally strong incentive not to carry out your intention. In the best known case, you have every reason to intend to ingest a toxin that you have every reason not to ingest.¹⁶ Placed in this predicament, you may correctly say the following. I have no reason to intend to take the toxin even though I have every reason to form the intention to do so. We have before us a distinction between two senses in which someone can have reason to adopt a propositional attitude. So far, I have attempted to illustrate rather than explain the distinction. When it comes to explaining the distinction between attitude and content-related reasons, there are different ways of doing so. One has already been implicitly introduced. A content-related reason for believing, wanting, or intending that P is a reason for believing, wanting, or intending that P is so. An attitude-related reason is a reason for bringing it about that one is in a certain attitudinal state. An attitude-related reason for believing,

¹⁵ Pascal’s Wager arguably illustrates the distinction being drawn here. Pascal’s Wager may give a reason to get oneself to believe in the existence of God. It gives no reason to believe in the existence of God. ¹⁶ This example is due to G.Kavka, ‘The Toxin Puzzle’, Analysis, 43/(1983), 33–6.

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wanting, or intending that P is a reason for bringing it about that one believes, wants, or intends that P. Here is a second way of articulating the distinction between attitude and content-related reasons. Consider belief and desire. A content-related reason for believing or desiring that P counts in favor of P being believable or desirable. An attitude-related reason for believing or desiring that P contributes not at all to P being believable or desirable. In the above examples the attitude-related reasons for believing the tyrant discovered Neptune and wanting to collect bottle tops contribute not at all to the believability of the tyrant having discovered Neptune, or the desirability of bottle top collecting. Generalizing, in contrast to an attitude-related reason, a content-related reason for believing, desiring, or intending that P indicates that P merits belief, desire, or intention.¹⁷ I have a preference for a third way of drawing the distinction.¹⁸ So far the distinction between attitude and content-related reasons has been presented as a distinction between two kinds of reason. That is a natural, but not inevitable, way of taking it. Consider the case of believing that the tyrant discovered Neptune. We could say the individual in that case has one kind of reason, an attitude-related one, for believing the tyrant discovered Neptune, but not another kind, a content related one, for holding that belief. Alternatively, rather than acknowledging two kinds of reason, we could say this. She has no reason at all for believing that the tyrant discovered Neptune. Instead she has a reason for wanting to believe that the tyrant discovered Neptune. If we construe the distinction between content and attitude-related reasons in this way, it transmutes into a distinction between reasons for having higher as opposed to lower-order attitudes. What looks like a different kind of reason for having, say, a first-order attitude is really the only kind of reason there is for having a different kind of second-order attitude. When the time comes to make use of the content-attitude related distinction in an account of Moore-paradoxicality I will presuppose this last way of taking that distinction.

3. CONSCIOUSNESS AND REASONS Consider Fred who only non-consciously believes that he is unmusical. Suppose that, despite having that unconscious belief, Fred should pursue a musical ¹⁷ I owe this way of putting the distinction to Eve Garrard. ¹⁸ This way of drawing the distinction is adopted by Derek Parfit in ‘Rationality and Reasons’ in Dan Egonsson, Bjorn Peterson, Jonas Josefsson and Toni Ronnow-Rasmussen (eds.), Exploring Practical Philosophy: From Action to Values (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2001): 17–41, and by Alan Gibbard Wise Choices, Apt Feelings: A Theory of Normative Judgment (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1990). 37

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career, and consciously believes that he should. Suspecting that there is an unconscious impediment to his effectively pursuing his chosen career, Fred visits a psychoanalyst. As a result he is persuaded that he does have an unconscious belief in his unmusicality. Fred comes to consciously believe that he has the unconscious belief that he is unmusical. Here is an asymmetry between Fred’s unconscious belief and his conscious belief that he ought to be a musician. Without it becoming conscious, Fred is able to consciously self-attribute his belief that he is unmusical. Since that is so, Fred can take his unconsciously believing himself to be unmusical as a reason for believing, wanting, or acting. For example, Fred may realize that his unconscious belief that he is unmusical inhibits him from properly exploiting his musical talent. In that case, Fred unconsciously believing that he is unmusical may give him a reason to persist with the therapy revealing he has that belief. Now consider Fred’s consciously held belief that he should become a musician. As we have seen, Fred may take the fact that he unconsciously believes himself to be unmusical to be a reason to attempt to divest himself of that belief. Fred may, likewise, take the fact that he believes he should become a musician as a reason for acting. He may, for example, take his believing that he should become a musician as a reason for not discussing his future career with his parents who very much want him to become a lawyer. So far, no asymmetry has emerged between the way in which a consciously, as opposed to a non-consciously, held belief can feature in a reason for acting or adopting a propositional attitude. An asymmetry emerges when we consider the following. Fred is able to take the fact that he believes he should become a musician to be a reason for acting. Since he holds that belief consciously, he is also able to take the fact that he should become a musician as a reason for acting. Fred is also able to take the fact that he believes he is unmusical as a reason for acting. Since he holds that belief only unconsciously, he is not able to take the fact that that he is unmusical as a reason for acting. Consciously holding the belief that P enables one to treat the fact that P, rather than just the fact that one believes P, as a reason for acting, or adopting further propositional attitudes. Only non-consciously holding the belief that P disables one from taking that P as a reason. What explains this asymmetry? One candidate explanation can be immediately discounted. Let us say that if one believes that P, and is able to take the fact that P as a reason, then the belief that P is reason-giving. Suppose we grant that a belief is reason-giving only if one is aware of holding it. It may be suggested that a non-conscious belief cannot be reason-giving because the one who holds it is not aware of doing so. We need to draw a distinction between being conscious of holding a belief, and that belief being consciously held. In the case described above, Fred, as a result of visiting his psychoanalyst, is fully conscious of holding the belief that he is unmusical. Despite that, the belief he is fully conscious of holding is not one

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that he consciously holds. So the question remains to be answered: why is it that only a consciously held belief can be reason giving? Here is the principle we are currently examining: C: A believer is in a position to take that P as a reason for acting, or consciously holding a propositional attitude such as believing, wanting, hoping intending etc, only if she consciously believes that P. The question before us is this. What explains the truth of C? One answer to that question has proved unsatisfactory. C is not true because only a belief that an individual is aware of holding can be reason-giving. An initially more promising answer goes like this. Take Fred’s unconscious belief that he is unmusical. He has, we are supposing, every reason to believe that he holds that belief. Nevertheless, he has no reason to believe that he is unmusical. Only a belief held for a reason can, itself, be reason-giving. Moreover unconscious beliefs are, typically, not held for reasons. So, non-conscious beliefs are, typically, not reason-giving. That is why C is true. At most this shows that an unconscious belief, even if consciously selfattributed, is unlikely to be reason-giving. It fails to show that such a belief cannot be reason-giving. We are still left with the question: why cannot a non-consciously held belief be reason-giving? In brief the answer is that only a consciously held belief can engage in the right way with other consciously held propositional attitudes, such as desires, to deliver a reason for adopting those attitudes. To see how only consciously held belief can engage with a consciously held desire to yield a reason consider a type of case familiar from the literature on belief and the will. Sam has a very strong desire to believe that God exists. As he sees it he has compelling truth-related reasons to believe there is no God. As a result he becomes severely depressed. So depressed that he has an overriding non-truth-related reason to reacquire his former consciously held belief in the existence of God. Prior to reacquiring that belief, Sam reasons thus. What I most want is that God exists. There is nothing I can do to satisfy that desire. In particular, my coming, once again, to consciously believe in God’s existence will make no difference to his existing. Still, given that I am unable to modify my desire for God to exist, if I do bring myself to consciously believe that God exists, I will no longer be depressed. Sam has a desire he recognizes he cannot satisfy: the desire that God exists. Having that desire, together with the depression resulting from its non-satisfaction, leads him to form a desire he can satisfy: the desire that he consciously believe that God exists. Suppose that, by adopting the relevant Pascalian procedures, Sam brings himself, for what he takes to be good truth-related reasons, to consciously believe that God exists. At that point Sam is asked whether he feels depressed because he lives in a universe without God. From the point of view of alleviating

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his depression what matters is that, from his perspective, Sam is in a position to give the following answer. I don’t feel in the least depressed about living in a universe without God because I don’t live in such a universe: God exists. Before he succeeds in repossessing his belief in God’s existence, Sam takes his desire for God to exist to be unsatisfiable, but sees that he is able to satisfy a distinct desire to consciously believe that God exists. After repossessing his belief in God’s existence, Sam not only takes his desire to believe that God exists to be satisfied, but, in addition takes his desire for God to exist to be satisfied. Were he not to take the second desire to be satisfied, he would still feel depressed. What the case of Sam illustrates is the distinctive impact on one’s psychology of having a belief consciously. Consciously having the belief that P enables one to integrate P into one’s view of the world in such a way that it being the case that P can have a distinctive impact on one’s mental life. We may label that impact the integrative function of consciously holding a belief. In summary, in virtue of a belief being consciously held it is possible for what is believed to be integrated into the believer’s world view in a way that what is believed in the case of an non-consciously held belief cannot be. In the remainder of the paper I will attempt to do the following. First to spell out in three interconnected ways the integrative function of holding a belief consciously. Second, to say how conscious belief having that function helps to explain the Moore-paradoxicality of: P, but I only non-consciously believe that P. Third, to relate the foregoing to the distinction drawn earlier between attitude and content-related reasons.

4 . C O N S C I O U S B E L I E F : D E L E T I O N A N D I N T E G R AT I O N Consider the following inferences: (A) Necessarily: there is only one even prime. There is only one even prime. (B) It is true that: snow is white. Snow is white. (C) John intends that: he John will leave soon. John will leave soon. Each of (A)–(C) have the following in common. Each one is an inference consisting of a premiss which supports the corresponding conclusion. In the case of (A) and (B) the premiss entails the conclusion. In the case of (C) the premiss does not entail, but makes probable the conclusion. We may say that in the case of each of (A)–(C) the truth of its premiss supports the truth of its conclusion. Here are some further features shared in common by (A)–(C) that I wish to call to attention. Ceteris paribus, belief in the premiss of each of (A)–(C) makes

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rational belief in its conclusion. We may say that, in the case of each of (A)–(C), the transition from believing its premiss to believing its conclusion is a defeasibly rational one. Another feature shared in common by (A)–(C) plays a prominent role in the following discussion. Consider (A). Suppose an individual makes what I called the rational transition from believing (A)’s premiss, necessarily: there is an only even prime, to believing its conclusion: there is an only even prime. Making such a transition amounts to deleting the operator expressed by ‘necessarily’ from that premiss. An alternative way to put the point is to say that making the relevant transition amounts to taking a proposition that falls under the scope of the necessity operator in the premiss outside the scope of that operator. The same point applies to (B) and (C). Making the defeasibly rational transition from a belief in the premiss of each one to a belief in its conclusion results in deleting the operator featured in that premiss. For our purposes calling attention to the features shared in common by (A)–(C) has the following relevance. Compare (A)–(C) with: (D) I consciously believe that: G. E. Moore smoked a pipe. G. E. Moore smoked a pipe. (D) shares the following in common with (A)–(C). It is defeasibly rational for anyone who consciously endorses (D)’s premiss to make the transition to endorsing its conclusion. If you accept, as you might put it, that you believe in full consciousness that G. E. Moore smoked a pipe then, in the absence of countervailing considerations, it is rational for you to believe that G. E. Moore did indeed smoke a pipe. The next feature (D) shares in common with (A)–(C) is the crucial one. Making the transition from believing (D)’s premise to believing its conclusion amounts to deleting the associated operator. In this case it amounts to deleting the operator expressed by ‘I consciously believe that’. Again we may put the point in terms of scope. Moving in thought from (D)’s premise to its conclusion places the proposition that G. E. Moore smoked a pipe outside the scope of the operator expressed by ‘I consciously believe that’. Before examining the significance of this point about deletion or scope, we need to note a difference between (D) and each of (A)–(C). I called the move from a belief in any of (A)–(C)’s premisses to a belief in its conclusion a defeasibly rational transition. Why call that move a defeasibly rational transition rather that something more familiar such as a warranted or justified inference? The reason is this. Belief in the premise of any of (A)–(C) does warrant or justify belief in its conclusion. One indication of this is the following. It is rational for one who believes (A)’s premiss to believe its conclusion. In the case of (A) it is also rational to believe the conditional whose antecedent is (A)’s premiss, and whose consequent is (A)’s conclusion. It is rational to believe:

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(A∗ ) If it is necessary that there is an only even prime then there is an only even prime. Moreover, unless it is rational to believe (A∗ ) it is not rational to move from a belief in (A)’s premiss to a belief in its conclusion. The same goes for (B) and (C). The rationality of moving from a belief in (B) or (C)’s premiss to its conclusion makes rational, in the case of (B), belief in the conditional: (B∗ ) If it is true that snow is white then snow is white, and, in the case of (C), the conditional: (C∗ ) If John intends that he will leave soon then John will leave soon. As with (A) and (A∗ ) the rationality of belief in (B∗ ) and (C∗ ) is required for the corresponding belief transitions to be rational. In this respect (D) contrasts with (A)–(C). Here once again is: (D) I consciously believe that: G.E. Moore smoked a pipe. G. E. Moore smoked a pipe. It is rational for me to move from a belief in (D)’s premiss to a belief in its conclusion even if it is not rational for me to believe: (D∗ ) If I consciously believe that: G. E. Moore smoked a pipe then G. E. Moore smoked a pipe.¹⁹ We might say that the move from a belief in (D)’s premiss to a belief in its conclusion is inference-like. Despite that, and this cannot be overemphasized, that move is not a rational one to make because it is a justified or warranted inference. Here is another way to make the same point that, as we will see, links the rationality of the belief transition represented by (D) to the Moore paradoxicality of: P, but I only non-consciously believe that P. Each of (A)–(C) is an inference that it is rational to make. As we have observed, each one involves deleting an operator from the proposition constituting its premiss. Clearly, in the case of (A)–(C), in order for that deletion to be rationally made the relevant premiss must, at least, be believed. For example, the truth of (A)’s premiss is by itself insufficient to make the deletion of the operator expressed by ‘it is necessary that’ rational. In contrast, it is enough for (D)’s premiss to be true for the deletion of the operator expressed by ‘I consciously believe that’ to be rationally made. What makes the transition from consciously self-attributing a consciously held belief to the belief consciously self-attributed a rational one? In brief the answer is this. The deletion function of consciously held belief enables a believer to integrate reasons and what they are reasons for into a unified view of the world. ¹⁹ Of course, it may be rational for me to believe D∗ . It would be so if I had reason to believe myself authoritative about G. E. Moore’s smoking habits. The point is it need not be rational for me to believe D∗ in order for it to be rational for me to move from D’s premiss to its conclusion.

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My next task is to clarify what kind of integration is at issue. I will attempt to do so in two ways. First, by invoking a comparison I have used elsewhere with the role of integration in fiction.²⁰ Second, and more importantly, by reintroducing the distinction drawn earlier between two ways of attributing a reason.

5 . I N T E G R AT I O N I N F I C T I O N Part of a fictional narrative may consist in some character within the story relating a fictional narrative: a story within a story. Such a story may unfold like this. The original storyteller, it may be an actual author, tells a fictional tale in which a group of individuals gather to have a beer together, and one of them tells a story. Call the story told within the original story the embedded story. Suppose the embedded story begins like this. A traveler journeyed to a distant land, and there met an old man who told her fortune. So long as it remains within the original story, as they say, just a story, the embedded story fails to be integrated with the original. There are a number of ways to signal this failure of integration. The most obvious is this. Suppose we are asked to specify what would have to be the case for the original story to be true. We would need to mention that a group of individuals gathered together to have a beer. We would not need to mention that a traveler journeyed to a distant land. What we would need to mention is that one of those having a beer told a story about such a traveler. Another indicator of the relevant failure of integration is this. Events in the original and embedded stories do not bear on one another in a way that they do in a pair of stories that, to anticipate, present an integrated fictional world. One of the protagonists in Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre is Rochester’s wife. Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea is what these days would be called a prequel to Jane Eyre. In the former novel, Rochester’s wife’s early life in the West Indies is narrated in part to explain the way she reacts in Bronte’s narrative. Despite being by different authors, the events in The Wide Sargasso Sea do bear on the events in Jane Eyre in a way that the events in the embedded and original stories do not bear on each other. An example of this is given above. Events narrated in The Wide Sargasso Sea may be invoked to explain events narrated in Jane Eyre, not just by the readers of those works, but also by their participants. For example, though it did not, reflecting on his wife’s earlier life as depicted in Jean Rhys’s novel could have given Rochester explanatory insight into his wife’s behaviour as the events in the embedded story could not provide explanatory insight into the behaviour of the individuals listening to it. Again, the events in Jean Rhys’s novel can provide the protagonists in Jane Eyre with ²⁰ In Gallois, ‘First-Person Accessibility and Consciousness’, Philosophical Topics, 28 (2000)/2 101–24.

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reasons for, say, acting or believing. Events in the embedded story cannot provide the protagonists in the original story with like reasons to act or believe. The next indication of integration failure relates directly to what was said in the last section about conscious belief. In the narration of the original story use is made of an operator: one, as it may be, expressed by ‘one of the individuals drinking beer began to tell the following story’. Call an operator of this type the story operator. Events in the embedded story fail to be integrated with those in the original because the former events fall within the scope of the story operator. Taking those events outside the scope of that operator has the effect of integrating them into the original story. For example, if one of those in the original story, without entering any qualification, remarks that the traveler in the embedded story has just entered the room, that has the effect of making that traveler part of the same fictional world as the world of the original story. In the case of a fictional narrative we have identified signs or marks of integration. A fictional work F1 fails to be integrated with a fictional work F2 if what would have to be the case for F1 to be literally true need not be mentioned in specifying what would have to be the case for F2 to be true. F1 fails to be integrated with F2 if what is the case according to F1 does not bear, in an explanatory or reason-giving fashion, on what is the case for the participants in F2. F1 fails to be integrated with F2 if what is the case according to F1 cannot be placed outside the scope of the story operator in F2. The point of the preceding remarks about integration is to construct a, hopefully illuminating, parallel with the sense in which consciously held beliefs are integrated. Of the three marks of integration the last two apply to conscious belief. Consider the case mentioned at the beginning of Section 3. Fred consciously believes he should become a musician, but only unconsciously believes he is unmusical. From Fred’s point of view, that he should become a musician bears on what, for example, he has reason to do or think. In contrast, that he is unmusical can have no bearing on what he should do or think, unless his belief that he is unmusical becomes conscious.²¹ The third mark of integration concerns scope. If pair of fictional works are integrated then what is the case according to one will fall outside the scope of the story operator in the other. Fred is, likewise, in a position to place that he should become a musician outside the scope of a belief operator as he is not able to place his being unmusical outside the scope of that operator.

6 . R E A S O N S , C O N S C I O U S N E S S , A N D I N T E G R AT I O N It is now time to return to the distinction between attitude and content related reasons. Consider the case I used to introduce the distinction in Section 2. The ²¹ Again, Fred can take that he believes he is unmusical as a reason for acting, but his belief that he believes he is unmusical is one he consciously holds.

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tyrant will torture you unless you believe he discovered Neptune. In that case, you have an attitude- but no content-related reason to believe he discovered Neptune. Now consider a belief which you do have a content-related reason for holding. You have a content-related reason for believing that the tyrant did not discover Neptune. One content-related reason you have for holding that belief is, say, that the tyrant was not born when Neptune was discovered. Here is a striking feature of a content-related reason which differentiates it from its attitude-related counterpart. The belief for which you hold a content related reason is the belief that: (i) The tyrant did not discover Neptune. One content related-reason you have for believing (i) is: (ii) The tyrant was not born when Neptune was discovered. In addition, you have an attitude-related reason for believing: (iii) The tyrant did discover Neptune, which is: (iv) You will be horribly tortured unless you adopt the belief that (iii). (ii) specifies the content of a belief that gives you a reason for believing (i). (iv) likewise specifies the content of a belief that gives you a reason for believing (iii). One of these reasons is content-related, and the other only attitude-related. What makes for this difference? Consider the pair of beliefs at issue in what we may call the tyrant case: (Bi) The belief that the tyrant did not discover Neptune. (Biii) The belief that the tyrant did discover Neptune. Your reason for adopting (Bi) is that: (ii) The tyrant was not born when Neptune was discovered. and for adopting (Biii) that: (iv) You will be horribly tortured, unless you adopt (Biii). Intuitively there is a relation between (ii) and (Bi) which does not hold between (iv) and (Biii). Making use of the terminology used in the last section to characterize one aspect of integration in fiction, (ii) bears on what (Bi) is about in a way that (iv) does not bear on what (Biii) is about. We may say that (ii) bears, in a way (iv) does not, on a question that (i) and (iii) supply competing answers to. (ii), unlike (iv), bears on whether the tyrant did discover Neptune. How should the distinctive connection between a content-related reason and the content of the belief it rationalizes be understood? One answer is clearly inadequate. It goes like this. (ii) is, we are supposing, your reason for having: (Bi) The belief that the tyrant did not discover Neptune,

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and, we may also suppose, you would have no other reason to hold (Bi) if you had not believed (ii). If so, your having a belief with (Bi)’s content is counterfactually dependent on your believing (ii). We may be inclined to say that the distinctive relation that holds between a reason Q and the belief that P is content-related if one would not have had a belief with that content, unless one had believed Q.²² Of course, the trouble with this suggestion is that you would not have had (Biii) if you had not believed (iv). There is no obvious relation of counterfactual dependence that distinctively holds between a content-related reason and the belief it is a reason for having. What then is the best way to understand the link between a content-related reason and the belief it rationalizes? The answer I favor is best given against two background assumptions whose defence must be left to another time and place. Consider the following pair of claims: (1) That it has rained recently is a reason for it being true that the ground is wet. (2) That Jones’s light is on is a (content-related) reason for Sam believing that Jones is at home. The first assumption is that the expression ‘is a reason for’ in sentences (1) and (2) attributes the same relation that holds between one thing being the case, or being true, and something else being the case or being true. The second assumption is the crucial one. In the case of (1) the reason-giving relation holds between it having rained recently and the ground being wet. In the case of (2) the same reason-giving relation does not hold between Jones’s light being on and Sam believing that Jones is at home. Instead, it holds between Jones’s light being on and Jones being at home. Here is an all too brief sketch of how one might employ the machinery of possible worlds to fill in this basic picture. In the case of (1) the reason-giving relation holds between something true at the actual world, it raining recently, and something else, the ground being wet, also true at the actual world. In the case of (2) the same reason-giving relation holds between something true at the actual world, Jones’s light being on, and something, Jones being at home, holding true at the members of some set of worlds. But the worlds in this case are Sam’s belief-worlds. We may put it like this. If (1) is true, it having recently rained is a reason for it being true in the actual world that the ground is wet. If (2) is true, Jones’s light being on is a reason for it being true in the world as Sam believes it to be that Jones is at home. Content-related reasons for other propositional attitudes behave in the same way. Sam, let us say, has the following content-related reason for going for a ²² An obvious objection to this proposal arises from the possibility of overdetermination of content-related reasons. You have a sufficient content-related reason, (ii), for (Bi). Suppose, you have an additional content-related reason which is also sufficient for (Bi). In that case, it may be false that had you not believed (ii), you would not have had (Bi).

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walk: it is a fine day. In that case, it being a fine day is a reason for it being true in the world as Sam wants it to be that he goes for a walk. Seen in this light in the tyrant case we say you have the attitude-related reason: (iv) You will be horribly tortured, unless you adopt (Biii) for adopting: (Biii) The belief that the tyrant did discover Neptune because (iv) being true is a reason for it being true in the world as you want it to be that you believe the tyrant discovered Neptune. (iv) is not a reason for it being true in the world as you either want or believe it to be that the tyrant did discover Neptune. That is why (iv) provides an attitude- but no content-related reason for (Biii).

7. CONSCIOUSNESS, REASONS, AND MOORE’S PA R A D OX We have covered a good deal of territory since taking note of the Mooreparadoxicality of instances of: (9) P, but I only non-consciously believe that P. The representational account of Moore-paradoxicality was found wanting in that it provides no explanation of the Moore-paradoxicality of (9). My aim is to provide, at least, the beginnings of such an account by utilizing as its components what has been covered in the previous five sections. It is now time to review those components, and say how they bear on the Moore-paradoxicality of (9). In Section 2 we looked at two ways, attitude and content-related, in which a reason can be a reason for believing. In the last section we noted that, as so labeling them suggests, content-related reasons have a distinctive connection to the contents of the beliefs they rationalize. In that section an attempt was made to articulate that connection. The relation of being a reason for holds between contents. In the case we are concerned with it holds between belief-contents. If Q is a content-related reason for having the belief that P, that is a matter of Q being true being a reason for P being true. Why not then simply say that Q being true is a reason for P being true without making reference to belief? Because the reference to belief indicated the standpoint from which Q being true is a reason for P being true. Q being true is a reason for P being true from the standpoint of belief rather than desire, hope, fear, intention, or, for that matter, actuality. Section 3 explored the relation between consciousness and reasons. There it was claimed that only a consciously held belief can supply a reason. That observation is linked to the topic of Section 4: the deletion and integration functions of consciously held belief. One may consciously self-attribute both

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consciously and non-consciously held beliefs. A striking difference between a consciously and non-consciously held belief is this. In the case where the belief that P is consciously held one is typically able to delete the qualification that P is something one believes. Such self-effacement is intimately connected to a function of conscious belief I called its integration function. The contents of consciously held beliefs can be integrated into a single view of the world. If one consciously believes that P and consciously believes Q then one can delete the qualification that P and Q are believed. As a result the contents of those beliefs are integrated into a view of the world in which both P and Q obtain. Now for the story about the Moore-paradoxicality of (9). To see how that story goes, consider the instance of (9) introduced in the first section: (9∗ ) Syracuse is in New York, but I only non-consciously believe that Syracuse is in New York. Suppose Sam comes to consciously hold (9∗ ). The representational account tells us that the following are consequences of Sam consciously believing (9∗ ): (3) Sam consciously believes that: Syracuse is in New York, and: (4) Sam consciously believes that: he only non-consciously believes that Syracuse is in New York. The task is to say why Sam holding the conscious beliefs attributed by (3) and (4) should be problematic for Sam given that (3) does not imply that Sam consciously believes (3), but, at most, that he believes (3). According to (4) Sam attributes to himself the belief that Syracuse is in New York as one that he non-consciously holds. Since that is so Sam will not be prepared to move from: (5) I (Sam) believe that: Syracuse is in New York, to: (6) Syracuse is in New York. But, Sam does consciously believe (6). So, from Sam’s point of view, (6) falls outside the scope of the belief operator in (5). Despite that, since he is only prepared to self-attribute his belief in (6) as a non-conscious one, Sam is not prepared to move from (5) to (6). He is thus not prepared to delete the belief operator in (5). Hence, in virtue of consciously believing (5) and consciously self-attributing a non-conscious belief in (6), Sam has conflicting dispositions. He is disposed to delete the belief operator in (5). He is also disposed not to delete the belief operator in (5). Can we leave it at that? Can we explain the Moore-Paradoxicality of (9) by simply noting that, in virtue of consciously endorsing (9∗ ), Sam will have the conflicting dispositions in question? To do so would be unsatisfactory since the

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resulting account of (9)’s Moore-paradoxicality would fail to meet the first-person constraint mentioned at the end of Section 1. Simply observing that consciously believing (9∗ ) induces conflicting dispositions in the believer leaves out what, from the believer’s first-person perspective, generates that conflict. We can do better by taking into account the integration function of consciously held belief, and its connection to content-related reasons. In consciously believing (9∗ ) our believer self-attributes the belief that Syracuse is in New York as one only non-consciously held. As so attributed the believer cannot place Syracuse being in New York outside the scope of the belief operator. Since the believer cannot take Syracuse being in New York outside the scope of that operator, she cannot integrate Syracuse being in New York into her antecedent view of the world. In particular, she cannot take Syracuse being in New York as a content related reason for acting or having further propositional attitudes, or take any content-related reason as a reason for Syracuse being in New York from the standpoint of belief. Our believer does consciously believe (9∗ ). So Syracuse being in New York is integrated into her overall view of the world. She is in a position to take Syracuse being in New York as a reason, and take content-related reasons as reasons for Syracuse being in New York, again from the standpoint of belief. In this way, consciously believing (9∗ ) generates an unstable view of the world believed in. In virtue of consciously believing (9∗ ), our believer consciously believes that Syracuse is in New York. Since that is so Syracuse being in New York is integrated into the world as the believer takes it to be. Our believer also consciously believes that she only non-consciously believes that Syracuse is in New York. Since that is so Syracuse being in New York fails to be integrated into the world as the believer believes it to be. I will conclude by, once again, using the comparison with integration in a story to throw light on what is going on here. In that case the counterpart to consciously believing (9∗ ) would be this. Suppose we begin reading the original story. In doing so we are presented with a fictional world. That fictional world includes a number of individuals having a conversation while drinking beer in a pub. Suppose one of those individuals announces that David Lewis’s realism about possible worlds has been conclusively established. If so, the existence of such worlds spatio-temporally disconnected from the world of the original story has been integrated with that world. So far no failure of integration. Some stories are inconsistent. Suppose the original story turns out to be inconsistent. Suppose the author of the original story implies that one of the beer drinkers is a teetotaler. Still no failure of integration. The fictional world depicted is one in which some beer drinker is a teetotaler. At this point, one of the characters begins relating the embedded story. Now there is a failure of integration. The embedded story introduces into the original story a fictional world that is not integrated into the world of the original story.

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The world-embedded story may in various ways become integrated into the world of the original story. The counterpart of consciously believing (9∗ ) would arise if a reader of the original story were invited to both integrate and not integrate the world of the embedded story into the world of the original. Such a story would not, as an inconsistent one is, be a story about the impossible, but an impossible story. In like fashion, consciously believing (9∗ ) leads a believer to tell an impossible story about the actual world.

9 Moorean Absurdity and Showing What’s Within Mitchell Green

1 . M O O R E A N A B S U R D I T Y A N D M O O R E ’ S PA R A D OX Moorean absurdity occurs in any utterance or thought in which an agent overtly expresses an intentional state that she also explicitly disavows; it also occurs in any utterance or thought in which an agent overtly expresses an intentional state whose content is incompatible with that of another intentional state that she also explicitly avows. Her expression-and-disavowal, or expression-and-avowal, might occur in her utterance or thinking of a single sentence such as ‘It’s raining but I don’t believe it.’ On the other hand this expression-and-disavowal, or expressionand-avowal, might occur without the medium of a single sentence. It might occur through the utterance or thinking of two consecutive sentences such as It’s raining. I don’t believe that it is. Alternatively, for all we know about what a conscious mind can do, it might occur through the simultaneous thinking or uttering of the above two displayed sentences. The above disjunctive characterization of Moorean absurdity (as either overtly expressing an intentional state that one also explicitly disavows, or overtly expressing an intentional state whose content is incompatible with that of another intentional state that one also explicitly avows) is not a grammatical characterization. Someone who utters a sequence of sentences such as those

Earlier versions of this paper were presented at the University of Virginia and at Texas A&M University. I thank audiences at both institutions for their insightful comments. Special thanks to John Williams and a referee for Oxford University Press for their illuminating comments on an earlier draft. Research for this paper was supported in part by a Summer Grant from the Vice Provost for Research and Public Service at the University of Virginia. That support is here gratefully acknowledged.

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Showing What’s Within

displayed above may simply be using her second sentence to express surprise or amazement. Doing so is not at all absurd. Nor is it absurd if the above sequence registers a mid-utterance change of mind. Likewise, as I recover from laryngitis I might test my voice by uttering the above sequence. In this case I don’t mean a word of what I say, and nothing in my performance is absurd. An actor who utters ‘It’s raining but I don’t believe it’ on stage in the course of a play about, say, G. E. Moore, is also not behaving absurdly; nor is he harboring absurd beliefs. This is due to the fact that so long as he is not a method actor, he is not expressing any of his beliefs. Instead, he is portraying a character expressing and avowing beliefs, and thereby portraying a character who is behaving absurdly. That is why the non-absurdity of the actor’s performance is compatible with the above characterization of Moorean absurdity.¹ Similarly, in Wittgenstein’s example the train announcer who says over the loudspeaker, ‘Train number 121 arriving on track #3 in two minutes (personally I don’t believe it),’ is not behaving absurdly. The reason is that he is only saying his first conjunct ex cathedra in the hopes of keeping his job, rather than putting it forth as an expression of his state of mind. That is why the non-absurdity of his announcement is compatible with the above characterization of Moorean absurdity. My account of Moorean absurdity invoked the notion of an overt expression. It may be possible to express an intentional state without doing so overtly. Perhaps when I involuntarily grimace as the paring knife slices into my finger I am expressing pain. I am not, however, overtly doing so. Accordingly, if while thus grimacing as the knife slices flesh I also say, ‘. . . but I’m not in pain,’ I am in error but am not absurd. Likewise, my blushing might express my embarrassment even though I cannot help it. If while blushing I also explicitly deny that I am embarrassed, I am simply wrong rather than absurd. Contrary to what these examples suggest, it is not enough for overtness that my expression be intentional. We will consider what more is required in Section 3 below. Whereas Moorean absurdity is a phenomenon for which we theorists need no apology, Moore’s Paradox is a testament to the ignorance of students of language and thought. For Moore’s Paradox is the apparent tension that arises from the facts that (1) such utterances and thoughts as ‘It is raining but I don’t believe it,’ seem absurd, but (2) their absurdity is not due to a semantic contradiction. An assertion of an explicit contradiction P&-P is absurd, but with the help of standard logical techniques we may explain its absurdity without landing in paradox. Likewise, a self-falsifying utterance such as an utterance of ‘I am not now uttering any words’ is absurd, but the absurdity is not paradoxical because there is no mystery how the utterance of that sentence falsifies itself: We explain the phenomenon with standard logic plus a gentle reference to pragmatics. A slightly ¹ It also shows why Szabo-Gendler (2001) is mistaken to contend that the actor’s performance is absurd. Szabo-Gendler is confusing absurdity in the actor with absurdity in the character portrayed. This mistake undermines the gravamen of his criticism of modal fictionalism.

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fuller reference to pragmatic notions such as is available from double-indexing semantics shows what is absurd about an utterance of ‘I am not here now’. With minimal assumptions about the structure of contexts of utterance plus the behavior of indexicals ‘I’, ‘here’, and ‘now’, we may infer that this sentence expresses a contingent proposition even though in every context in which it is (or could be) thought or uttered it is not true. Once again we account for the absurdity without landing in paradox. Matters are not so simple with cases of Moorean absurdity. ‘It is raining but I don’t believe it,’ and ‘It is raining but I believe it is not,’ not only express propositions that could be true. They are also sentences that could be truly uttered or truly thought.² If I utter ‘It is raining but I don’t believe it,’ what I utter could be true so long as I am not sincere. If I say to myself without uttering any words, ‘It is raining but I don’t believe it,’ what I say to myself could be true so long as I am not sincere. (Below I show that it is possible to say something to oneself in the privacy of one’s own thoughts that one does not also believe.)³ We label rather than explain the phenomenon with such expressions as ‘pragmatic paradox’ or ‘pragmatic absurdity’. In what, then, might we locate the source of Moorean absurdity? My aim in what follows will be to resolve Moore’s Paradox by explaining the source of Moorean absurdity. With apologies to existentialists, the first step shall be to elaborate on the notion of absurdity.

2 . A B S U R D I T Y A N D T H E V I O L AT I O N O F N O R M S Absurdity arises from severe violation of a system of norms.⁴ Some well-known systems of norms are theoretical rationality and practical rationality. We find a severe violation of theoretical rationality in any agent whose system of beliefs is guaranteed to put her in error no matter how the world happens to be, and in a way that she could in principle discern with no empirical investigation. Jane’s belief that Hesperus is shining puts her in error if in fact Venus is not shining, but it is not absurd simply to be in error. So too, Jane’s belief that Hesperus is shining ² Cargile (1967) is to my knowledge the first to observe this. ³ Kriegel (2004) asserts that although Moorean sentences can be true, they cannot be truly asserted and they cannot be truly believed. As we shall see below, only the latter claim is correct. Kriegel’s view that a Moorean sentence cannot be truly asserted seems to rest on his view that an utterance is an assertion only if it is an expression of a belief, that is, only if it is sincere. This view simply stipulates away the possibility of a lie, and will not be assumed here. ⁴ ‘In ordinary life, a situation is absurd when it includes a conspicuous discrepancy between pretension and aspiration or reality: someone gives a complicated speech in support of a motion that has already been passed; a notorious criminal is made president of a major philanthropic foundation; you declare your love over the telephone to a recorded announcement; as you are being knighted, your pants fall down.’ This characterization from Nagel (1979), is more inclusive than the one given in the text, but I will only need the less inclusive characterization in what follows.

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but Phosphorus is not shining puts her in error no matter how the world turns out to be compatible with metaphysical possibility. However, Jane’s ignorance of the identity of Hesperus and Phosphorus may prevent her from being able to discern her error except by empirical investigation, and if that is so, then her belief that Hesperus is shining but Phosphorus is not, need not be absurd. On the other hand, if Jane believes that Taylor saw Hunter but that Hunter was not seen by Taylor, then not only is she in error no matter what else is true of the world, she can in principle discern her error with no empirical investigation. That is why it is absurd for her to believe that Taylor saw Hunter but that Hunter was not seen by Taylor. (Harboring an absurd belief need not make her irrational; perhaps she is irrational only if she violates theoretical rationality in a way that would be open to minimal, as opposed to extensive, reflection.) A belief or system of beliefs that severely violate the norms of theoretical rationality is absurd even if prudential, moral, or other norms enjoin one to hold it. In that case it would be absurd from the point of view of theoretical rationality, while permissible, and perhaps even mandatory, from the point of view of some other system of norms. Thus suppose that the only way to save the life of a loved one is to take a pill and undergo hypnosis with the result that I come to believe a contradiction. Suppose further that I agree to induce that belief in this way. Then I undertake to do something that is absurd from the point of view of theoretical rationality, but morally mandatory—or at least permissible. Instead of this gaseous ‘point of view’ talk, we could just describe the situation as one in which my coming to believe a contradiction is both absurd (full stop) and morally permissible. Theoretical rationality is not the only system of norms admitting of severe violation. We find a severe violation of practical rationality in one whose system of plans, together with her utilities and subjective probabilities, guarantee that she does not maximize subjective expected utility, and in a way that she could in principle discern with no empirical investigation. Suppose I accept a sure thing of $1 over a wager in which a fair coin is tossed, such that if it comes up heads I win $1,000 and if it comes up tails I gain nothing. This choice guarantees that I do not maximize subjective expected utility, and I could in principle discern this with no empirical investigation. A rival to this classical style of decision theory, prospect theory,⁵ offers a distinct set of norms whose violation takes a different form from that adduced by subjective expected utility theory. We need not settle this rivalry here. Suffice it to say that each theory offers an account of practical rationality, and with it an account of what constitutes a severe violation of that form of practical rationality. No matter the theory, a severe violation of what is by its lights practically rational will be deemed absurd. As with the case of theoretical rationality, we may expect the norms of practical rationality to collide ⁵ See for instance Tversky and Kahneman (1992), and Wakker and Tversky (1993). Green 1999a discusses the philosophical significance of these approaches to decision theory.

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with other norms. When that happens, what is absurd from the point of view of theoretical rationality might be acceptable, and perhaps even mandatory, from the perspective of that other system of norms. My system of beliefs might be absurd without its following that I am being absurd in reporting on or otherwise acknowledging them. My therapist shows me films of my behaving in phobic ways around spiders, even the harmless ones. I conclude from these observations of myself that I believe that all spiders are dangerous. However, after learning how few spiders are truly dangerous, I come to see that on the whole they are not, and that those that are tend to be reclusive. Yet old phobias are hard to shake, and I might acknowledge both this fact and my new empirical investigations into arachnids with the words, ‘Even though I believe that all spiders are dangerous, really they aren’t.’ This is an eminently reasonable thing for me to report. After all, each conjunct of that report is both true and justified. Yet if this report is sincere and correct, it follows (as we shall see below) that I am in error. Indeed I could know that at least one of my beliefs is in error with no further empirical investigation. According to our account of absurdity, it follows that my system of beliefs is absurd. That is compatible with the fact that when I assert, ‘Even though I believe that all spiders are dangerous, really they aren’t,’ this assertion is true, justified, and not the least absurd. The assertion might be true, justified, and not absurd. It might also be sincere. If it is, then it reports-and-expresses a pair of beliefs that cannot fail to put me in error. It reports my belief that all spiders are dangerous. It expresses my belief that not all spiders are dangerous. This pair of beliefs is absurd. But there the pair sits, and I have good evidence for the presence of that pair of beliefs. So it can be theoretically rational for me to report or express a system of beliefs that are sure to violate theoretical rationality, even when those beliefs are my own. If by dint of phobia or obtuseness you’ve violated norms of theoretical rationality to the point of absurdity, you’re only being reasonable in acknowledging the fact. It can be theoretically rational for me to acknowledge someone’s severe violation of theoretical rationality, even my own. It can also be theoretically rational to commit such a violation. Anyone who writes a sizeable book has a good chance of making an error somewhere. If she predicts in her preface that she has made an error somewhere in the ensuing five hundred pages, she is only being reasonable. On the other hand her preface together with the ensuing text cannot all be true. In addition, if we assume that she believes everything she says in her book (including the preface), her belief system is absurd. How then can her prefatory prediction of error be reasonable? The phobic stands back from his belief that all spiders are dangerous and acknowledges its falsity while also acknowledging that, being bound up with habits of mind, autonomic responses, and the like, it is hard to shake. The modest author stands back from the many beliefs she expresses in her book to acknowledge that the limitations of her intellect (and those of her research assistants and other authors on whom she has drawn) make it likely that she has erred somewhere in those five hundred pages.

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Those limitations are epistemic limitations—limitations on one’s ability to live up to norms of theoretical rationality. It is theoretically rational to acknowledge those limitations; after all, the author knows she is no less fallible than others. This is to say that it can be theoretically rational to harbor a system of beliefs that severely violate norms of theoretical rationality.⁶ Hence, it can be theoretically rational to harbor a system of beliefs that is absurd from the point of view of theoretical rationality. The so-called Preface Paradox is thus a misnomer. Instead we should acknowledge the existence of prefatory absurdity while denying that such utterances or beliefs are paradoxical at all. The phobic puts his finger on his absurdity; he knows which of his beliefs is wrong without being able to shake it. The author draws a circle around her absurdity; she acknowledges that at least one of her many beliefs is likely to be wrong without being able to pinpoint which ones. You might even know that I harbor an absurdity without knowing whether the source of that absurdity is theoretical rationality, practical rationality, or some other system of norms. Suppose that a severe violation of one system of norms N1 would result in absurdity, and a severe violation of another system of norms N2 would do so as well. Suppose now that you know that my behavior severely violates either N1 or N2 but you do not know which. In such a case, surely, you know my behavior is absurd in spite of your not knowing the precise source of that absurdity. Similarly, suppose N1 and N2 are systems of norms, and I perform an action of which I can know, with no further empirical investigation, that it will violate either N1 or N2. Here, while we cannot infer, of either N1 or N2, that I have severely violated it, we can infer that I have severely violated their conjunction, namely N1 & N2. In that case my behavior is again absurd in spite of our not being in a position to locate the source of that absurdity in a violation either of N1 or of N2.

3 . S PE A K E R M E A N I N G In what follows I shall use ‘meaning what s/he says’ and its cognates to refer to cases in which an agent says something in such a way as to take responsibility for it. On this usage, one means what one says even if one is a liar, and even if one is mistaken. On this usage, one who assertively utters an indicative sentence P means what she says only if she stands to be right or wrong on the issue ⁶ Descartes’s theism and views about evil lead him to conclude that so long as we are using our minds in the most rigorous and careful way possible, God would not permit us to be in error. For this reason, Descartes would hold that so long as the author in question has done her utmost to ensure the accuracy of her claims, that is, so long as she clearly and distinctly perceives the truth of each of these claims, she could not be justified in making her prefatory prediction of error. In lieu of Descartes’s extraordinary but implausible position, we do well to acknowledge the likelihood of our error even when, as authors, we have done our best.

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of P depending on whether P is true; she also puts forth P as something she believes, whether or not she really does believe it. Ronald Reagan did not, we hope, mean what he said in warming up a microphone before a press conference with the words, ‘The bombing begins in five minutes.’ So too one does not generally mean what one says in rehearsing lines from a play. By contrast, you mean what you say in promising to educate a dying friend’s children only if you commit yourself to educating those children, and only if your sincerity in making that promise depends upon your intending to educate them. The notion of meaning under scrutiny here is often referred to by the misleading phrase, ‘speaker meaning’. What is speaker meaning? I shall pursue only as much of an answer to this question as is needed for the account below. Paul Grice is widely believed to have shown that to achieve a case of speaker meaning, one must make an utterance with the intention of producing an effect on an audience, with the further intention that this effect be achieved at least in part by the audience’s recognition of your intention. (Grice 1957, 1969, 1982) This is a so-called reflexive communicative intention. Unfortunately, Grice’s conditions for speakermeaning are too restrictive (Davis 2003; Green 2003; forthcoming). Speaker meaning is possible in the absence of a reflexive communicative intention. For instance, when Herod presents Salome with St John’s severed head on a charger, he both shows her that St John is no longer and means that St John is no longer.⁷ He intends Salome to come to believe that St John is dead, but presumably intends her to conclude this from the presence of the severed head rather than from any recognition of his intention that she believe anything. After all, the severed head is there for her to see. Speaker meaning does not require a reflexive communicative intention. In fact, it does not even require a communicative intention (an intention to produce a cognitive effect, such as a belief, on an audience). A framed suspect might mean that she is innocent in saying, ‘I am innocent!’ Yet she is fully aware that no one will believe her and, being realistic, she does not intend to convince anyone. She might not even intend her interrogators to believe that she believes she is innocent, since she might know that they’re certain she’s lying. Or, gazing into my newborn daughter’s eyes I might say, ‘All things valuable are difficult as they are rare,’ meaning what I say, without having the slightest intention to produce beliefs or other attitudes in her or in anyone else. Again, in the film Sleeper, Woody Allen’s character Miles Monroe discovers in his solitary exploration of a futuristic world a genetically modified chicken the size of small house. Miles remarks, ‘That’s a big chicken.’ In saying this he does not seem to be intending to produce an effect on anyone, himself included. ⁷ The fact that he is not telling her that St John is no longer is neither here nor there: We know independently that speaker meaning does not require telling. One can, for instance, speaker-mean, ‘How many apples are in the bowl?’, without making an assertion.

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An intention to communicate, to say nothing of a reflexive intention to communicate, is not required for speaker meaning. However, one way of achieving speaker meaning is to harbor another kind of reflexive intention, specifically, that built into the notion of overtness. Doing something overtly involves as a minimum making some aspect of oneself manifest. I might make manifest the bruise on my arm by pulling back the sleeve that had been covering it. In so doing I need not cause anyone actually to perceive that bruise. What matters instead is that the bruise be open to view by appropriately situated observers. I can likewise manifest my commitment to some proposition P by making that commitment open to inspection to appropriately situated interlocutors. I might do that by asserting P in front of an audience, be they distracted or not; I might do it by asserting P in the privacy of my study. In my locked, unbugged study, the only audience to whom I am manifesting my commitment is myself. I nevertheless mean what I say when I say to myself, ‘All things valuable are difficult as they are rare.’ I can, however, make some aspect of myself manifest without being overt. The bulging vein on my forehead makes my anger manifest without itself being, or being a part of, any overt behavior on my part. I can even intentionally make some aspect of myself manifest without behaving overtly. As we approach each other in a dark alley I cough to keep from startling you when we get closer; but I need not be overtly coughing. Contrast this with a case in which I am a schoolteacher who has come upon a young couple displaying affection, and I stentoriously clear my throat before they see me. Here my throat-clearing will be overt: Not only do I intentionally manifest my presence, I also manifest my intention to manifest my presence. Overtly to do something requires doing it with the intention that the act be manifest, and further with the intention that that very intention itself be manifest. But it is not true that I can achieve overtness merely by having two intentions, namely (a) an intention that some commitment of mine be manifest, and (b) a further intention that this very intention be manifest. Consider the following Strawson-inspired example (Strawson 1964). You are exploring a house for possible purchase. I want to manifest to you my belief that it is rat-infested, and so enact the following plan. I will enable you to see me leaving a rat in the house, while acting as if I think I am unobserved. I also know that you think me a good and veracious friend, and know that, although you won’t conclude from the presence of the rat that it is genuine evidence that the house is rat-infested, you will nevertheless conclude from my odd behavior that I must believe that the house is rat-infested. In acting as I do in the above example, I intend that my belief that the house is rat-infested be manifest. I thus satisfy condition (a) above. I will also intend in so acting that this very intention (that my belief that the house is rat-infested be manifest) itself be manifest. Hence, I satisfy condition (b) as well. However, in this case it does not seem that I overtly display my belief that the house is

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rat-infested. The problem appears to be that, as in the case of my secreting your monogrammed handkerchief into the crime scene in order to implicate you, something about my performance is under the table—or at least the floorboards. Contrast this with a case in which you and I are discussing the aforementioned house over lunch, and you ask whether I think it infested with anything. I happen to have a rat in my briefcase, and wordlessly take it out, dangling it by the tail in front of you. Here, surely, I overtly display my belief that the house has a vermin problem. From the foregoing it seems that at least one means to achieve overtness in a way that will make speaker meaning possible, requires all the relevant intentions be out in the open.⁸ One approach to filling this need is to demand that to be overt, the intention that my commitment be manifest self-referentially requires this very intention to be manifest as well.⁹ That suggests the following sufficient condition for speaker meaning: Sufficient Condition for Propositional Speaker Meaning: S means that P if 1. S performs an action A intending that: 2. In performing A, S’s commitment to P be manifest, and that it be manifest that S intends that (2). P might be the proposition that it is blustery outside, with A being the uttering of certain words or a non-conventional action such as the throwing open of curtains to reveal a looming storm. In the Herod case the P in question is the proposition that St John is dead, and the action is Herod’s presenting of St John’s head on the charger. Once again, one’s commitment to P might be manifest without anyone being aware of this fact. As a result one can overtly intend that one’s commitment to P be manifest without intending to produce effects on others. In light of our Sufficient Condition for Propositional Speaker Meaning, then, one might mean something without intending to produce effects on any audience, and one can mean something in the course of overtly making one’s commitment manifest.¹⁰ ⁸ That is compatible with our having ulterior motives in cases of speaker meaning. In remarking on the weather I might be trying to be sociable, or for that matter be intending to distract you while purloining your maraschino. In either case I nevertheless speaker-mean that it’s a nice day when I say, ‘Nice day.’ For further discussion of the distinction between ulterior and ostensible motives in speaker meaning see Green (1999b). ⁹ Green (forthcoming: ch. 2), develops this point in further detail. In addition to elucidating the sufficient condition given below for propositional speaker meaning, speaker-meaning that P, that work also develops the notion of objectual speaker meaning, in which an agent means α, where α is an object. ¹⁰ Some authors have been skeptical of the very possibility self-referential intentions. (Such scepticism is not to be confused with scepticism of the doctrine that all intentions are self-referential. One can accept that self-referential intentions are possible while remaining neutral on the question whether all intentions are self-referential.) Thus for instance Seibel (2003) writes, ‘the content of [the self-referential intention] contains an element which refers to the intention itself. But what does that element look like? . . . How does it single out the intention and nothing but it? By identifying features, i.e., properties which are exclusively possessed by the intention? But what could be these

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4 . S PE A K E R M E A N I N G I N YO U R H E A RT ‘Speaker meaning’ is a misleading label because it applies to cases involving no speech. Suppose that we share no language and I want to alert you to the danger of the quicksand nearby. I mime out before you my being pulled under the surface by quicksand. In so doing I might speaker-mean that there is quicksand nearby without making a sound—indeed without moving my lips. The label ‘speaker meaning’ is also misleading because one can speaker-mean things without doing anything publicly observable. To see this, consider first of all that the distinction between speaker-meaning and merely mouthing words has an analogue in the realm of thought. I can think through the lines of a poem in my head without assenting to what those lines say. On the other hand, I might not only say something to myself but also mean it in such a way as to be committed to it. As with speech, I might thereby mean some proposition P in such a way as to stand to be right or wrong on the issue of P depending on whether P is true. If in the course of a vigorous morning run I resolve to make it up to the top of the hill before me by saying in my heart the words, ‘I shall conquer that hill!’, I might mean what I say. If I do, then I undertake a commitment that will be satisfied if and only if I conquer that hill.¹¹ I take the phenomenon of speaker-meaning something to oneself to be familiar and uncontroversial. In spite of this, talk of so-called ‘inner speech’ tends to make philosophers nervous because of its association with discredited attempts to base an account of linguistic meaning upon an incorrigibly private language.¹² However, I here make no claim that linguistic meaning can be explained in features?’ Intentions admit of the same act/object dichotomy as do many other intentional states, and like other mental events, are spatiotemporally located. On the modest assumption that no two intentions have identical spatiotemporal coordinates, we may then use such coordinates to individuate intentions. One might still wonder what the content is of an intention whose content refers to that very intention, which itself comprises both an intending (a state or act) and a content. One answer may be given in terms of an analogue of truth conditions applicable to intentions, namely satisfaction conditions. Just as the thought, had as I regain consciousness after a near-fatal accident, ‘This thinking is miraculous’, will be true just in case that thinking is, indeed, miraculous, so too, the intention, ‘This intention shall be manifest’ will be satisfied just in case that intention is, indeed, manifest. ¹¹ Anselm distinguishes between two things the fool might be thought to be doing when he says in his heart, ‘There is no God’ (1995: 101). On the one hand the fool might be silently saying these words to himself. Anselm thinks this case is possible. What he does not think possible is another case in which the fool not only says to himself, ‘There is no God,’ but also understands what he is saying. Anselm’s point is that if the fool were to grasp the concept of God, he would immediately see that God could not fail to exist. In what follows I will not lay down any limitations on what absurd thoughts a person can entertain even as he understands the words—if such there be—in which they are couched. ¹² For a creditable such attempt, however, see Davis (2003).

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terms of mental acts of ascribing meaning to words. For all I say in this essay, acts of inner speech are only possible in the context of a linguistic community. However, one might still challenge the idea that it is possible overtly to do something in the privacy of my own thoughts. Does overtness, invoked in my sufficient condition for speaker meaning above, make any sense in this context? I contend that it does. My believing that it is raining outside does not guarantee that I will tell myself that it is. For instance if I am conscious of the rain but not attending to it, I will not tell myself that it is raining. Hence I can believe that it is raining outside without speaker-meaning anything. I might also make my belief that it is raining manifest to myself by, for instance, going to the closet to take out an umbrella. Here too, however, I haven’t speaker-meant anything, but have merely acted on and thereby displayed my belief that it is raining outside. What if I intentionally manifest to myself my belief that it’s raining? This too is not sufficient for speaker-meaning something to myself. I film myself going outside with an overcoat, hat, and umbrella. Unfortunately I also have anteriograde amnesia, which prevents me from retaining new information for more than a few seconds. (Assume that I know that I suffer from this malady.) I leave the film of myself for a later stage of myself to watch. I know that that later person-stage will watch the film and see an earlier person-stage going out dressed for bad weather. I also know that the later person-stage will not know who or what made the film, and with what intent. Because of this, the earlier person-stage might intend, in placing the film where he does, to manifest to himself his belief that it is raining. However, he will in all likelihood not believe that in so doing he is manifesting to himself this very intention. After all, the later person-stage will have no idea where the film came from; and the earlier person-stage knows this. Because of this, the earlier person-stage will in all likelihood be unable overtly to manifest his belief that it is raining. This squares with our intuition that in leaving the film there for the later stage of himself to see, the earlier stage doesn’t speaker mean that it is raining. In order to speaker-mean something to myself, what is needed instead is a case in which I not only intentionally manifest to myself my belief that it is raining, but also intentionally make my intention to manifest that belief to myself, itself manifest. If I have anteriograde amnesia, and know it, I might create a movie to be a screen-saver on my computer showing me ostentatiously going to the closet to get a hat and umbrella. In that movie I stare significantly at the camera while donning gear for the weather. In placing the movie where I do, I may reasonably intend not only to make my belief that it’s raining manifest to my later self, but also intend to make manifest to my later self this very intention. (Assume that I have retained enough knowledge from before the accident producing my amnesia that I know that the only way this movie could have ended up as a screen-saver was if I had put it there myself.) As with the

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case of the quicksand example above, here I speaker-mean something without producing any words.¹³ The situation is similar when I say something to myself while uttering no words aloud. If I say in my heart, ‘It’s raining,’ I may reasonably intend to make my belief that it’s raining manifest to myself. Further, in a standard such case, not only do I intentionally manifest to myself my belief that it’s raining, I also intentionally make that very intention manifest to myself. For I will normally be aware that the only reason I would ‘hear’ myself saying these words was that I had intended to manifest my commitment to myself. In an unusual case, such as schizophrenia, I might be suffering from delusions of the sort that cause me to hear voices. If I am schizophrenic and know it, then I probably also know that I am prone to hear such voices. In that case it is less clear that I can intend, by saying something to myself, to manifest my intention to manifest a belief to myself. One symptom of schizophrenia, then, may be an inability to speaker-mean things to oneself by saying things in one’s heart. Speaker-meaning something in the privacy of one’s own thoughts seems possible, and indeed not at all unusual. This becomes clear in light of our sufficient condition for speaker meaning, which requires no communicative intentions, much less reflexive communicative intentions. However, it might seem that a disanalogy between speaker meaning in one’s heart and speaker meaning done in public is that only the latter can fail to be sincere. No mystery surrounds the idea of lying to others. What about lying to oneself? Sometimes we use this expression to refer to people believing things on insufficient evidence. For instance, Hunter’s lying to himself in thinking he can make it in time for his Chicago flight might be due merely to the facts that (a) his chances are so slim, and (b) he should have known better. This need not involve his telling himself anything that he thinks untrue. On the other hand, everyday experience also suggests that I can say something to myself, meaning it, without believing what I say. I tell myself that this is my last piece of pie when I know perfectly well that by the time I leave the room, the pie plate will be clean. The phenomenon is also reflected in literature. For instance, in Ann Packer’s, The Dive from Clausen’s Pier (Knopf, 2002), the narrator Carrie is visiting her fiancé in the hospital after his spinal injury from a dive off a pier. She is gradually losing interest in caring for him, and wants to move away: Again he closed his eyes, and now tears seeped out, a single trail moving down each cheek. I set his hand down and began stroking his forearm again. I wish I could say I felt selfless then, unaware of myself. That I was thinking only of him, or that I wasn’t even thinking. But I was: This is me doing the right thing. This is me being brave and strong for Mike. (p. 102) ¹³ Those sympathetic to a ‘memory links’ account of diachronic personal identity need not be distracted with the question whether a person could survive an amnesia of this sort. Grice’s (1941) version of such an account can accommodate this kind of case.

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When Carrie says, ‘This is me being brave and strong for Mike,’ she is telling herself that she is being brave and strong for Mike. She speaker-means it. Yet she doesn’t really think she is being brave and strong for him. She knows full well that she is moving away from him emotionally, that her visits to the hospital are becoming less frequent and more halfhearted, and that she may not even love him any more. We have intuitive support for the idea that one can speaker-mean something to oneself. We now have, in addition, intuitive support for the idea that one can speaker-mean something to oneself without believing it. Intuitions are fallible, however, and this latter intuition might seem mistaken. A speech act that is not sincere is typically made with the intent to deceive. Is it plausible that one can intend to deceive oneself by saying something to oneself? Likewise, speaker-meaning is widely construed as an attempt to produce an effect on an audience by means, at least in part, of their recognition of the speaker’s intention to produce that effect. I have rejected that account and suggested that it is at least sufficient for speaker meaning that one intentionally and overtly manifest one’s commitment to a proposition. Is it possible to do this in the privacy of one’s own thoughts without being sincere? I manifest my commitment to P by making that commitment available. I might do that by asserting P in front of a distracted audience; I make my commitment available to them even if they don’t acknowledge that commitment. If I manifest my commitment to P by asserting it in the privacy of my own study, I make that commitment available to myself and no one else. (Assume that there are no recording devices or eavesdroppers.) But much the same holds for things said in my heart. There are many things I believe that are not manifest to me. Introspection, psychotherapy, and elenchus are all ways of dredging up beliefs into consciousness. When I follow one or more of these paths, I might articulate what I find by consciously thinking to myself some such thing as: ‘I do seek my colleagues’ approval!’; or ‘I don’t think that consequences are all that matter for morality!’ As in the case of what I utter in my locked study, when I say one of these things ‘in my heart’ I make my belief manifest to myself and to no one else. That is still enough for me to speaker-mean that I reject consequentialism, and it is still enough for me to mean that not enough of my self-worth comes from within. I cannot make manifest, to myself or anyone else, a belief that I do not have. How then can I fail to be sincere in the confines of my own thoughts? In the cases in which I make a sincere assertion I not only make my belief manifest, I also (intentionally and overtly) manifest my commitment to the content of the proposition that I assert. Hence, when I sincerely assert that it is raining, I not only manifest my belief that it is raining, but also manifest my commitment to the proposition that it is raining. By contrast, I might manifest commitment to a proposition that I do not believe. Similarly, when Carrie says to herself, ‘This is me being brave and strong for Mike,’ she intentionally and overtly manifests

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commitment to the proposition that she is being brave and strong for Mike, without actually believing that proposition. She would like to be being brave and strong for Mike, but she doesn’t think she is (and in fact she isn’t). 5 . S PE E C H AC TS A N D T H E I R N O R M S We now see that speaker meaning is possible in the context of one’s own thoughts, and that it is even possible to speaker-mean something in such a milieu without being sincere. Further, like beliefs (which are governed by the norms of theoretical rationality), and actions (which are governed by the norms of practical rationality), speech acts are governed by their own system of norms. That system overlaps with but is not coextensive with the norms of theoretical rationality. According to speech act norms, assertions are to be relevant, justified by the speaker’s evidence, and sincere. Promises are to be sincere and not obviously impossible to fulfil. Questions are not to presuppose anything controversial. And so forth. What would be a severe violation of speech act norms? It is absurd to attempt to promise you something that is obviously beyond my control to bring about, e.g., to make it the case that the Napoleonic wars did not occur if it is common knowledge between us that those events took place in the past. It is absurd to attempt to bequeath something to you that, as you and I both know, is not my own to give, such as the Horsehead Nebula. These cases square with the account of absurdity given in Section 2 above, for in all of them one can discern with no further empirical investigation that one will violate a system of norms. Unlike some other speech acts, assertion is beholden to a norm of theoretical rationality, namely that one is to assert only what is true. It also includes a norm whose source is less clear: Assert only what one believes. We don’t need to decide here whether this sincerity norm governing assertion flows from theoretical rationality or from some other system of norms. Perhaps it does, or perhaps on the other hand it is a sui generis norm of assertion. For in either case, an assertion about which it can be known, just by inspecting its content, that it is false, is absurd. So are assertions whose content is falsified by particular aspects of their use. For instance, an utterance of ‘I am not now uttering any words,’ is false even though its content could be true. It is thus absurd knowingly to utter such a sentence even if it expresses a proposition that could be true. Similarly for a conscious thinking of, ‘I am not now thinking’: It is absurd consciously to think this sentence even if it expresses a proposition that could be true. (I assume that if one consciously thinks this sentence, one knows that one is doing so.) Suppose that we know of some promise P that anyone who makes it or purports to make it, meaning what he says, has either promised to do something that she will not, in fact, do, or has made a lying promise. Suppose, in addition, that we may infer this with no further empirical investigation. Were we able to

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infer with no further empirical investigation that the promise will not be kept, we would be able to conclude that the promise is absurd. Were we able to infer with no further empirical investigation that the promise is not sincere, we would be able to conclude that it is absurd. Knowing that no matter how the world is, the promise is either one or the other of these is also enough to justify our concluding that it is absurd. It does not follow from this, though it may also be true, that such a promise is impossible. Fortunately we need not settle that issue. Similarly, suppose that we know of some sentence or thought S that anyone who asserts (thinks) it, meaning what they say (think) is either mistaken or is not sincere. We know this without requiring any empirical investigation, and no matter what else is in the speaker’s (thinker’s) mind. Did we know with no further empirical investigation that the speaker’s (thinker’s) utterance is mistaken, we could conclude that the utterance is absurd. Did we know with no further empirical investigation that the speaker’s (thinker’s) utterance is not sincere, we could conclude the same thing. As with the case of the promise just contemplated, our ability in principle to infer with no further empirical investigation that the assertion is either mistaken or not sincere is also enough to justify our conclusion that it is absurd. Here too it may be going too far to say that such an assertion (thought) is impossible, and here too we are fortunate that we need not settle that issue. I will argue that all instances of Moorean absurdity are absurd on account of severely violating norms for speech acts in this way: We may know with no further empirical investigation that either the speaker is in error, or is not sincere. We might not know which one it is, but as we saw in Section 2 above, this does not matter. What matters is that we may know with no further recourse to facts about the world that the speaker is violating one of the norms internal to assertion (or whatever speech act is the vehicle of her Moorean utterance). That is perfectly compatible with the content of what is asserted being true. It is also perfectly compatible with the speaker believing what is asserted. 6 . M O O R E A N S PE E C H A N D M O O R E A N T H O U G H T My approach assumes that all instances of Moorean absurdity are speech acts, even while some are not acts of speech. This assumption seems to be in conflict with the widely shared view that Moorean absurdity can be realized merely by believing some such thing as ‘P, but I don’t believe it’, rather than saying it. Surely belief is not a form of assertion, not even a form of mental assertion? It is considerations like these that make those interested in Moorean absurdity doubt that a speech-act approach could possibly be broad enough to cover the relevant explananda. It is not, however, true that merely believing, ‘P, but I don’t believe it,’ is absurd, or causes one to be absurd. If either that entire belief or one component

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of it is not accessible to conscious introspection, then the agent may be unable to discern with no further empirical investigation that she is in error. Suppose that either the entire belief, ‘Spiders are harmless, but I believe they aren’t,’ or one of its two conjuncts, is locked in my unconscious in such a way that it would require at least a year of intense psychotherapy including films of my own behavior, virtual reality exercises, fMRI information, and so forth, to come to be aware of it. In believing both conjuncts of ‘Spiders are harmless, but I believe they aren’t,’ I cannot fail to be in error.¹⁴ However, the same goes for my belief that Hesperus is shining but Phosphorus is not. In both cases it would take empirical investigation to determine that I must be in error. In the latter case I must learn the identity of Hesperus and Phosphorus; in the former case that I believe both conjuncts of, ‘Spiders are harmless, but I believe they aren’t.’ Just as it is difficult to see what would be absurd about believing that Hesperus is shining but Phosphorus is not, so too it is difficult to see what would be absurd in this case of believing both conjuncts of, ‘Spiders are harmless, but I believe they aren’t.’ If some ‘part’ of a Moorean belief is unconscious, then one may be unable to bring it into consciousness by introspection. Rather, one may need to do some empirical investigation to detect its presence. Because of that, an unconscious belief of this sort is no more absurd than believing both that Hesperus is shining and that Phosphorus is not. It may not be intuitively clear what an unconscious belief having the form either of a commissive or omissive Moorean sort would be like; yet we need not dwell on this issue. The reason is that approaches taking Moorean belief as the explanans and other cases of Moorean absurdity as the explananda,¹⁵ predict that believing the following two propositions puts one in a situation of Moorean absurdity: (a) P, (b) I believe that not-P. One need not believe their conjunction in order to exemplify Moorean absurdity, according to this standard account. After all, the argument used in the footnote to the last paragraph applies equally well to anyone who merely believes both (a) and (b). Similarly for the commissive case. Accordingly, all we need to imagine is an ¹⁴ We discuss the omissive and commissive cases in order. Assume that belief distributes over conjunction. Then one who believes ‘P, but I don’t believe it’ believes P, and believes that he does not believe that P. That latter belief must be in error. For the commissive case suppose that I believe that (p & I believe that not-p). Then assuming that belief distributes over conjunction, I believe that p. But what I believe, that p & I believe that not-p, is true only if I also believe that not-p. Thus what I believe is true only if I have contradictory beliefs about p, one of which must thus be mistaken. A Moorean belief, be it omissive or commissive, conscious or unconscious, cannot fail to put the person harboring it in error. I should mention as well that we are here assuming that the unconscious belief about spiders can only be made known to me by empirical investigation: it is ‘subconscious’ rather than ‘preconscious’. According to theories of the ‘adaptive unconscious’ now gaining currency (canvassed in Wilson 2002), some unconscious material can only be known in a ‘third personal’ way rather than in a ‘first personal’ way; they can thus only be known by empirical investigation. I take the spider belief to be a case of this kind. ¹⁵ Positions of this kind are discussed in Chapter 1, Section E.2 in this volume.

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agent whose belief (a) is unconscious while his (b) belief is conscious. In that case, while his entire set of beliefs put him in such a position that he cannot fail to be in error, he is not absurd for holding this set of beliefs. He cannot fail to be in error, yet he will be unable to discern this fact without further empirical investigation. For this reason, his system of beliefs is no more absurd than his believing that Hesperus is shining and Phosphorus is not shining. I claim that a necessary condition of an agent’s being absurd is that her severe violation of norms is one that she can in principle come to be aware of with no further empirical investigation. Accordingly, if some of my Moorean belief is submerged in my unconscious, then I am not, at least on this basis, absurd. Rather, one needs consciously to think some such sentence as ‘P, but I don’t believe it,’ in order to generate absurdity recognizably Moorean. But this by itself is not enough, for there are many propositions we think through without committing ourselves to them. Instead, one needs not just consciously to think it, but more specifically to speaker-mean it in the way described in Section 3 above. As we saw in that section, this does not require that one believe what one says to oneself. It does require that one manifest commitment to what one says to oneself, and in particular a commitment to the truth of what one says. (Strictly speaking, I have given only a sufficient condition for speaker meaning. However, I take it as not in need of argument that merely thinking a thought, and merely manifesting commitment to oneself, are not sufficient for speaker meaning.) 7 . M E N TA L A S S E N T The approach adumbrated thus far might also seem to be superseded by the view that takes ‘mental assent’ as the core notion, and explains other cases in its terms. However, as this term is normally used, mental assent must be sincere (Shoemaker 1995). The reason is that mental assent is construed by authors such as Shoemaker as an episodic instantiation of belief. On this usage, one cannot mentally assent to a proposition that one does not believe. Because of this, Shoemaker’s approach does not have sufficiently broad scope. It does not account for cases in which a person says to himself a Moorean sentence that he does not in fact believe. As noted above we have everyday familiarity with the experience of saying things to oneself that one means but does not believe. Doing so with a Moore sentence can still be absurd. It follows that the mental assent approach lacks adequate scope to be the source of a general explanation of Moorean absurdity. 8 . S H OW I N G W H AT ’ S W I T H I N Showing comes in at least three forms. First of all, I might show my courage by acting bravely. My brave behavior is good evidence for my courage. A

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grammatical tag for this category is showing-that, since the brave behavior also shows that I am courageous. Second, recall from our discussion of manifestation above that I might show something in such a way as to make it perceptible. I show my bruise, and thereby enable others to see that bruise. Let us put this perception-enabling form of showing under the rubric of showing-α, where ‘α’ is a singular term. Finally, I might also show how something looks, feels, sounds, etc. I present your nose with a durian and enable you to know how it smells. Similarly, the trepidation in my voice might enable you to know how my anxiety feels if you are sufficiently empathetic. If you are sufficiently empathetic, then hearing my voice may enable you to imagine feeling as I do. If you can do that, then you know how I feel. These three forms of showing we may label showing-that, showing-α, and showing-how. The discussion below depends primarily on the notion of showing-that; showing-α has a cameo in Section 10. We are now in a position to tie together various strands to support an account of what is absurd in the utterances that Moore was the first to discover. Assertions purport to show beliefs. If they are sincere, they do show those beliefs. This is not because they make beliefs perceptible (that doesn’t seem to make sense), nor because they show how a belief feels (beliefs don’t seem to feel like much of anything). Rather, an assertion is (inter alia) evidence that the speaker believes what is asserted. That is why the sincerity of an assertion shows that you believe what is asserted. Now suppose you show a belief or other attitude that you also deny having. Then since ‘show’ is a success verb, that denial must be in error. The showing might be public (in an utterance) or private (in a saying to oneself). If you show a belief (or other attitude) and then go on to describe yourself as believing its contradictory, then whether or not this latter statement is true, you are in error. On the other hand if you purport to show a belief (or other attitude) that you do not in fact have, then you are not sincere. Suppose then that you (perhaps silently) assert 1. P but I don’t believe that P. Then by the assumption that assertion distributes over conjunction, you have asserted P and have asserted that you don’t believe that P. The former assertion is either sincere or not. Suppose it is sincere. In that case, it shows your belief that P, but then your other assertion, that you don’t believe that P, is in error. In that case you’re in violation of the norm that assertions are to track the truth. On the other hand suppose that the assertion of P is not sincere. Once again you are in violation of a norm of assertion, namely to assert only those things you believe. So either the assertion is sincere or it is not; but in either case we may infer with no further empirical investigation that you are in violation of a norm of assertion. Hence with no further empirical investigation we may conclude of someone who asserts, ‘P but I don’t believe it’, that she is in violation of a norm of assertion. It is a severe violation of a norm or system of norms to perform an act of which

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it can in principle be inferred with no further empirical investigation, that it will violate that norm. From our original contention that absurdity consists in a severe violation of a system of norms, we may infer that assertion of ‘P but I don’t believe it,’ is absurd. So too, suppose you assert 2. P but I believe that not-P, With assertion-distribution we may infer that you have asserted P and have asserted that you believe that not-P. Your first assertion is either sincere or it is not. Suppose it is sincere. Then your second assertion, that you believe that not-P, is either correct or incorrect. In the former case, you are in error: for your first assertion, being sincere, shows your belief that P, and so you believe that P; while the correctness of your second assertion implies that you believe that not-P. Anyone who believes both P and not-P is in error. On the other hand, if the second assertion, that you believe that not-P, is incorrect, then you are in violation of a norm of assertion. Likewise and as before, if the first assertion, namely that P, is not sincere, you still violate a norm of assertion. It follows that if you assert ‘P but I believe that not-P’, then we may conclude with no further empirical investigation that you are in violation of some norm of assertion. It is a severe violation of a system of norms to perform an act of which it can in principle be known with no further empirical investigation that it will violate those norms. From our original contention that absurdity consists in a severe violation of a system of norms, we may infer that assertion of ‘P but I believe that not-P,’ is absurd. I cannot be sure that the norm that assertions are to track the truth is a norm of assertion. It might instead be a norm of theoretical rationality, applying to assertion, as with any other activity aiming at the truth, simply by universal instantiation. However, if this is so it will not undermine our explanation of the absurdity in cases such as (1) and (2). For if this is a norm of theoretical rationality only, then one who asserts (1) performs an act that, no matter how the world turns out to be, either violates a norm of assertion or violates a norm of theoretical rationality. Likewise, if the norm that assertions are to track the truth is a norm of theoretical rationality only, then one who asserts (2) performs an act that, no matter how the world turns out to be, either violates a norm of assertion or violates a norm of theoretical rationality. As we saw in Section 2 above, that still suffices for absurdity. 9 . M I X E D I L LO C U T I O N C A S E S The approach offered here generalizes with little difficulty to cases other than those involving only assertion. I shall consider two such cases, one involving supposition, and the other involving interrogatives.

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Even off stage, one can utter an indicative sentence with other than assertoric force by, for instance, forwarding a proposition merely as something to be entertained, as a supposition for the sake of argument, or as a conjecture. Taking, for brevity, only the case of supposition for the sake of argument (which hereafter I shall just refer to as supposition), offhand it seems we can intelligibly inquire whether a speech act of supposing is sincere no less than we can inquire into the sincerity of a compliment, an assertion, an apology, or a promise.¹⁶ A supposition’s sincerity does not require the speaker to believe what she has proffered as a supposition. Rather, it is at least sufficient for her sincerity that the speaker perform such a mental act of supposing as one might do in one’s unspoken hypothetical deliberations. (I doubt that such a mental act is required for the speaker to be sincere, but that question need not be settled here.) The result of such a mental act is that the speaker is in the intentional state of supposing, occupancy of which I shall take to be at least a necessary condition for her speech act of supposing to be sincere. That a speech act of supposing can be assessed for sincerity might be obscured by the fact that it is not pragmatically deviant to assert or believe 3. P, though my state of mind is not one of supposing that P. One can also suppose this sentence (or its content) by imagining a case in which: P holds but one refrains from supposing P. Further, one can assert or believe without oddity 4. P, though my state of mind is one of supposing that not-P. One can also suppose it, thereby supposing both P and the proposition that her state of mind is one of supposing not-P. No paradox need result.¹⁷ On the other hand, as exemplified by the relevance of sentences involving interrogatives to the question what it is for an interrogative to be sincere, we need not restrict our inquiry to examples in which the two conjuncts of either of the sentences just displayed are put forth with the same illocutionary force, or are held under the same propositional attitude. Accordingly, consider a situation in which a speaker inscribes P under the scope of a supposition sign of the sort used in natural deduction systems. That sign indicates without asserting that P is put forth with the force of supposition, and will indicate that all reasoning carried out to its right and below P are within P’s scope. Assume further that the speaker ¹⁶ In its use as part of a verb phrase of the form ‘A supposes’ taking complements of the form ‘that P’, ‘suppose’ is often used to impute beliefs, sometimes with the suggestion that the believer is in error. I shall nevertheless consider only its use to refer to the acceptance of a premise for the sake of argument. This usage of ‘suppose’ is thus also to be distinguished from uses of ‘assume’ to refer to a person’s commitment, often unacknowledged, to the truth of a proposition. (‘Assume’ is however used at other times to refer to the use of a premise for the sake of argument, as are ‘say’, ‘pretend’, and ‘imagine’, and what is said below will apply to all these uses.) ¹⁷ Sorensen (1988) argues along similar lines that there are no imagination blindspots, and I take it that he would say the same for supposition. We are about to see that these points may be granted without its following that there is no analogue for the case of supposition of the Moore paradox.

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is using the sign of supposition to guide her informal reasoning rather than to aid her in the use of a formal system, and that she appends to her inscription of P the parenthetical remark that her state of mind is not one of supposing P. Such a parenthetical remark would normally be read not as within the scope of the supposition sign but rather as being put forth assertorically, and thus would behave analogously to the parenthetical that occurs in 5. If (as is indeed the case) snow is white, then grass is green. Here the speaker asserts the conditional, ‘If snow is white, then grass is green’ while also putting forth ‘snow is white’ assertorically even though grammatically speaking the parenthetical clause occurs in the antecedent.¹⁸ Likewise, in 6. P (though my state of mind is not one of supposing P for the sake of argument)

the content of the parenthetical clause will normally be read as being put forth assertorically rather than as part of what is being supposed. In addition, the content P and the content expressed in the parentheses can be conjoined to form a logically consistent proposition. Nevertheless, if someone were to write the above display on a chalkboard addressing an audience familiar with the conventions of natural deduction, their audience may have no choice but to find the performance absurd. A first, charitable response to this performance might be to construe the parenthetical remark as retracting the supposition of P. However, just as we may be unable to construe one who says, ‘P but I don’t believe it’ as expressing a mid-utterance change of mind, so too this interpretation may be unavailable if, for instance, the speaker goes on to infer things from P. A second charitable response is that the speaker is dissociating herself from her supposition of P, perhaps because her commitment to not-P is so deeply entrenched that she cannot bring herself to reason as if P is true. This construal will also be ruled out by the speaker’s going on to reason under P’s scope with adequate facility. A third charitable response might be to construe the speaker as signaling that her state of mind is not merely one of supposing P, but is instead one of accepting P in a way that may seem stronger than supposition (i.e., belief or conjecture). This interpretation, too, may be ruled out by contextual factors, and would have been explicitly ruled out had the speaker instead inscribed ‘P (though my state of mind is not one of accepting P in any way at all)’, within the scope of the supposition line. Attempts at charitable interpretation might, in the end, ¹⁸ This perspective on parentheticals is defended in Green (2000b).

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meet with failure, with the result that the audience would have no choice but to find the speaker’s performance absurd. Such a case would be an analogue for supposition of the absurdity to be found in certain utterances of ‘P but I don’t believe it’.¹⁹ How shall we explain what is absurd in such a case? Suppose that the speaker’s putting forth P as a supposition for the sake of argument is sincere. Then her doing so shows her state of mind of supposing that P. Her parenthetical utterance, having the force of an assertion, must therefore be in error, whence she is in violation either of theoretical rationality or norms of assertion (or both). On the other hand, if the speaker’s putting forth P as a supposition for the sake or argument is not sincere, then she is in violation of a norm of the speech act of supposition. (No absurdity arises from a person’s putting forth P as a supposition for the sake of argument while going on to avow that she supposes not-P.) Accordingly, anyone who utters (6) above in the conditions described (including the condition of being within the scope of the supposition sign) is in violation of some system of norms, and we may determine this with no further empirical investigation. That is what makes her utterance absurd. Some authors have suggested that the following utterance exhibits Moorean absurdity: 7. It’s raining but I don’t know that it is. The point, however, needs to be handled with care. It is clear that some utterances of this sentence in a speech act generate no absurdity. We know from the discussion of supposition just offered that a speaker can utter (or think) an indicative sentence in a speech act without making an assertion. Suppose, then, the first conjunct of (7) is uttered as, say, a conjecture. It is perfectly appropriate to put forth a conjecture while making clear that you don’t know it to be true. This is attested by the fact that while it is appropriate to respond to my assertion of P with the challenge, ‘How do you know?’, it is not appropriate to challenge my conjecture with that question. It seems, more generally, that (7) is a case of Moorean absurdity only if the first conjunct is put forth assertorically. ¹⁹ Some authors, for instance Searle and Vanderveken (1985), and Rosenthal (1998), have suggested analogues of the Moore paradox involving neither belief nor assertion without developing the possibility of such a paradox for the case of supposition. However, not all of these authors keep sight of the fact that a speech act can generate Moorean absurdity only if it characteristically expresses an intentional state. As Heal (1977) argues, although a speech act such as an imperative might seem to generate Moorean absurdity, as in ‘Shut the door, but I don’t want you to shut the door’, this appearance is probably deceptive. The reason is that imperatives are not speech acts one of whose roles is the expression of an intentional state, and it is for this reason not the case that imperatives are speech acts that characteristically express an intentional state. One uttering an imperative might provide her addressee with evidence of her intentional state (perhaps a desire), but it does not follow from this that the imperator expresses any such state. Further, one performing an imperative might adventitiously express such an intentional state as a desire, but this fact is of little interest to the study of Moorean absurdity.

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Let us suppose then that the first conjunct of (7) is an assertion. Then it does seem plausible that we have a case of Moorean absurdity. If so, then we may account for this fact as follows. An assertion, if sincere, justified, and correct, shows not only one’s belief, but also one’s knowledge. Going on to deny that one knows what one asserts must put one in error. Similarly, in 8. It’s raining but I know that it isn’t if one is sincere, justified, and correct, the first conjunct shows one’s knowledge, whence the second conjunct must be in error. (Unlike believing p and believing not-p, one can’t know this pair of propositions.)²⁰ I close this section with a remark about non-indicative versions of Moorean absurdity. It is not clear to me whether non-indicative cases of Moorean absurdity exist. For instance, I do not know whether, ‘Shut the door, but I don’t want you to shut the door,’ exemplifies Moorean absurdity. Likewise, I do not know whether ‘What time is it, even though I have not the slightest interest in knowing the time?’, exemplifies Moorean absurdity. Both cases are pragmatically odd, but it would be rash to infer that they exhibit the same sort of oddity that we find in Moore’s cases. However, if either one of these cases does exemplify Moorean absurdity, the approach offered in this paper explains why. The explanation would proceed by observing that if the first conjunct is sincere, then it shows a state of mind that the second conjunct mistakenly disavows; thus whether or not the first conjunct is sincere, the speaker is in violation of some system of norms, and she is in violation of such norms in a way that is open to inspection with no further empirical information.

1 0 . N O N - I L LO C U T I O N A RY C A S E S We glossed Moorean absurdity as any utterance or thought in which an agent overtly expresses an intentional state that she also explicitly disavows; or any utterance or thought in which an agent overtly expresses an intentional state whose content is incompatible with that of another intentional state that she also explicitly avows. This account does not strictly require that the agent in question use words, even in the privacy of her own thoughts. That raises the question whether we find Moorean absurdity in cases in which an agent scowlingly denies that she is angry, or exuberantly avows her lack of exuberance. Just as we have found cases of speaker meaning that do not require uttering any words, a speech act does not require any act of speech. For instance, an extended finger at an auction is a promise to purchase the item at the amount bid ²⁰ In (8) of course, we also have a semantic contradiction, but we would need some reason to think that absurdity is ‘additive’ before predicting that (8) ought to sound ‘more’ absurd than other cases that we have considered.

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on the condition that no one else outbids that offer. Pulling down one’s lower eyelid in some Mediterranean cultures is a warning. So too, nodding one’s head is an assertion under the right conditions. That is why it can be the vehicle of Moorean absurdity. As Williams (forthcoming) observes, if you ask me whether the pubs are open and I nod my head in emphatic agreement while saying, ‘I don’t believe so,’ this seems no less absurd than one of the standard cases 1 or 2 above. This and similar cases involving nonverbal speech acts can be explained in terms of the line of thought we have developed thus far: A nodded head, for instance, shows one’s acceptance of some salient proposition if in fact that head’s owner is sincere; together with her subsequent utterance we may infer with no further empirical investigation that one is either in error or not sincere. Other cases involving nonverbal behavior are quite different. When an agent scowlingly denies that she is angry, or exuberantly avows her lack of exuberance, she might be in error only. She might simply be unaware of the fact that she is scowling or that she is behaving exuberantly. The scowl might not be one that she has noticed, and she might not be conscious of the exuberant behavior. In those cases, her disavowal or avowal is simply a mistake of fact and so is not absurd: It is not the case that with no further empirical investigation she could conclude that she is in violation of a system of norms. If we find such cases amusing it is because it is easy to be amused at people who are blind to their own emotional displays. Likewise, one’s companion on a midnight walk through a cemetery who tremblingly says ‘Not scary at all,’ might be unaware of the tremors in her voice, and might be unable to detect her own fear without empirical investigation. Given these possibilities, we cannot conclude from these performances that the agent is behaving absurdly, or is in some other way absurd. The emotional expressions in these last cases are not intentional, to say nothing of overt. Might an agent overtly express an intentional state without conventional devices such as words or gestures? If so, that would suggest that a case of Moorean absurdity might be found in which an agent behaves both expressively and overtly (rather than performing a speech act) while disavowing what she expresses. To that end, imagine that I not only scowl, but overtly do so: according to the gloss given above, it would be sufficient to achieve this result if I not only intentionally display my anger, but also intend to display this very intention. In such a case it would be natural to describe me as scowling significantly. In fact, in such a case it is also natural to describe me as speaker-meaning that I am angry. That does not fall under our sufficient condition for propositional speaker meaning as given in Section 3 above. The reason is that condition applies when an agent manifests her commitment (to a proposition, state of affairs, etc.). However, it is not clear that I am committing myself to anything in scowling, even overtly. Instead, what I am doing in overtly scowling is displaying my anger—making that anger perceptible rather than merely giving evidence for the presence of that anger. (This is suggested by the fact that if I am dissimulating, not showing my anger but merely seeming to do so, I may be misleading or mendacious but no

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liar.) In this case, I am showing my anger in the showing-α way discussed in Section 8, rather than merely showing that I am angry. Speech acts are not the only vehicles by which we express ourselves. They are also not the only way in which speaker meaning is achieved. In a case in which we intentionally and overtly show our intentional state, we speaker-mean that state without performing a speech act, and we express that intentional state as well. Suppose that I scowl in such a way as not only to express my anger, but to do so overtly. If I could at the same time deny that I am angry, then we would have the makings of Moorean absurdity. However, it is not clear that I could do both these things at once. For in light of what I literally say when I deny that I am angry, it is hard to see how an interpreter could sensibly construe me as intending overtly to display my anger. My literal utterance will put pressure on the interpreter either to construe my facial behavior as inadvertent or covert; or at least as facetious. That is why, when it might seem as if a case of Moorean absurdity involving nonverbal, non-conventional expressive behavior is in the offing, the best we may be able to do is either to describe the agent as protesting too much or as hamming it up. REFERENCES Anselm (1078 [1995]), Monologion and Proslogion, ed. T. Williams (Indianapolis: Hackett). Collins, A. (1996), ‘Moore’s Paradox and Epistemic Risk’, Philosophical Quarterly, 46: 308–19. Cargile, J. (1967), ‘On Believing You Believe’, Analysis, 27: 177–83. Davis, W. (2003), Meaning, Expression and Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Green, M., (1999a), ‘Attitude Ascription’s Affinity to Measurement’, International Journal of Philosophical Studies, 7: 323–48. (1999b), ‘Illocutions, Implicata, and What a Conversation Requires’, Pragmatics & Cognition, 7: 65–92. (1999c), ‘Moore’s Many Paradoxes’, Philosophical Papers, 28: 97–109. (2000a), ‘The Status of Supposition’, Noûs, 34: 376–99. (2000b), ‘Illocutionary Force and Semantic Content’, Linguistics & Philosophy, 23: 435–73. (2003), ‘Grice’s Frown: On Meaning and Expression’, in G. Meggle and C. Plunze (eds.), Saying, Meaning, Implicating (Leipzig: University of Leipzig Press), 200–19. (forthcoming), Self-Expression (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Grice, P. (1941), ‘Personal Identity’, Mind, 50: 330–50. (1957), ‘Meaning’, Philosophical Review, 66: 377–88; repr. in Grice (1989). (1969), ‘Utterer’s Meaning and Intentions’, Philosophical Review, 78: 147–77; repr. in Grice (1989). (1982), ‘Meaning Revisited’, in Mutual Knowledge, ed. by N. Smith (New York: Academic Press), 223–43; repr. in Grice (1989). (1989), Studies in the Way of Words (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press).

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Heal, J. (1977), ‘Insincerity and Commands’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 77: 183–202. (1994), ‘Moore’s Paradox: A Wittgensteinian Approach’, Mind, 103: 5–24. (2003), Mind, Reason, and Imagination (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Kriegel, U. (2004), ‘Moore’s Paradox and the Structure of Conscious Belief ’, Erkenntnis, 61: 99–121. Nagel, T. (1979), ‘The Absurd’, in Mortal Questions (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Rosenthal, D. (1998), ‘Thinking That One Thinks’, in A. Burri (ed.), Language and Thought (Berlin: De Gruyter), 259–87. Searle, J., and Vanderveken, D. (1985), Foundations of Illocutionary Logic (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Shoemaker, S. (1988), ‘On Knowing One’s Own Mind’, Philosophical Perspectives, 2: 183–209. (1995), ‘Moore’s Paradox and Self-Knowledge’, Philosophical Studies, (77): 211–28. (1996), The First Person Perspective and Other Essays (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Siebel, M. (2003), ‘Illocutionary Force and Attitude Expression’, Linguishes and Philosophy, 26: 351: 66. Sorensen, R. (1988), Blindspots (Oxford: Clarendon Press). Strawson, P. (1964), ‘Intention and Convention in Speech Acts’, Philosophical Review, 73: 439–60. Szabo-Gendler, Z. (2001), ‘Fictionalism and Moore’s Paradox’, Canadian Journal of Philosophy, 31: 293–308. Tversky, A. (1975), ‘A Critique of Expected Utility Theory: Descriptive and Normative Considerations’, Erkenntnis, 9: 163–73. and Kahneman, D. (1992), ‘Advances in Prospect Theory: Cumulative Representations of Uncertainty’, Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, 5: 297–323. Wakker, P. and Tversky, A. (1993), ‘An Axiomatization of Cumulative Prospect Theory’, Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, 7: 147–76. Williams, J. (forthcoming), ‘Wittgenstein, Moorean Absurdity and its Disappearance from Speech’, Synthese. Wilson, T. (2002), Strangers to Ourselves: Understanding the Adaptive Unconscious (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press).

PART V A RG U M E N TS F RO M M O O R E ’ S PA R A D OX


10 My Philosophical Position Says p and I Don’t Believe p Alan Hájek

I N T RO D U C T I O N There is typically something strange about asserting or believing Mooreparadoxical sentences. In this paper I want to harness this strangeness to do a particular kind of philosophical work. I will argue that various prominent philosophers are committed to asserting and believing various Moore-paradoxical sentences in virtue of the very philosophical positions that they hold. Some of the philosophers in question may be surprised to learn of their commitment and find it unwelcome; others may not be troubled by their commitment and claim that not all Moore sentences are paradoxical after all; still others may positively celebrate their commitment and the paradoxicality, perhaps in the name of notoriety or boldness of thought. In any case, observing the commitment may help lay bare what we find peculiar in these philosophical positions, where previously we may only have had vague feelings of unease; or we may regard the Moore-paradoxical commitments as further reductios of the positions; or we may conclude that not all Moore sentences are paradoxical after all. Whichever way things go, I hope that some philosophical progress will be made. Along the way, I will consider some philosophical positions that may not actually have been held by any philosopher, prominent or otherwise, but that still have some interesting Moorish consequences.

I thank Jon Kvanvig for helpful discussion at an early stage, and Graham Priest, Roy Sorensen, and especially Andy Egan, Jordi Fernandez, Mitch Green, and John Williams for very astute comments on earlier drafts.

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My Philosophical Position

MOORE SENTENCES, AND MORE SENTENCES (OF THE SAME KIND) We begin with the canonical versions¹ of Moore sentences—sentences of the form: (1) p and I believe that not-p. (2) p and I don’t believe that p. In very much the same spirit, we have: (3) p and I believe that ‘p’ is not true. (4) p and I don’t believe that ‘p’ is true. In fact there is a spectrum of sentences displaying the same peculiarity to varying degrees. For example: (5) p and I assign ‘p’ low probability. (6) p and I assign ‘p’ middling probability. (7) p and I don’t assign ‘p’ high probability. Along the way we will encounter further sentences that are similarly anomalous. The simplest way to reveal the varying degrees of oddity of such sentences is to begin with the idea that in asserting p, one represents oneself as knowing that p. (Cf. Unger 1975; Slote 1979; De Rose 1991; Williamson 1996.) But the smaller the probability that one assigns to p, the further one is from believing and a fortiori from knowing that p, and thus the greater is the discrepancy between how one represents oneself by an assertion of p, and how one represents oneself by an assertion of a probability assignment to p. Even if we do not accept this rather stringent account of assertion, we can surely agree that in asserting p, one conveys at least reasonable confidence in p—one conveys at least a moderately high subjective probability assignment to p. (Cf. Lewis 1976.) But one sends mixed messages by conveying also that this subjective probability is low, or middling, or not moderately high. After all, probability functions, even subjective probability functions, are functions: they cannot assign two different values to the same proposition. So there is apparently ¹ There are non-canonical instances of the same puzzling phenomenon—e.g. ‘God knows that I am an atheist’ (Sorensen 1988). Conversely, there are non-puzzling instances of Moorean-looking sentences: for example, ‘it is raining, and I don’t believe that there is precipitation’, uttered by someone who does not know what the word ‘precipitation’ means. More generally, someone may not know that the sentence denoted by ‘p’ expresses or is implied by the proposition p. Thus, a sentence’s having the canonical Moorean syntax is neither necessary nor sufficient for its being Moore-paradoxical. I will not attempt to give an analysis of just what Moore-paradoxicality consists in. Instead, I will play the Justice Stewart defense, resting content with knowing the phenomenon when I see it; moreover, I believe that all the examples I adduce clearly display it. I thank John Williams for discussion on this point.

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no way of interpreting someone who utters (5)–(7) as having a single probability assignment for p. And the lower the probability stated in the second conjunct, the harder this task of interpretation becomes. (Note that it is not strange in the same way to say p, and ‘p’ is probable, since both conjuncts send the same message of confidence in p. Strangely wordy, perhaps—but not strange in the same way.) Thus, if you assert any of (1)–(7), you apparently represent yourself to others as having a certain attitude to the world, which you then undermine or contradict with the representation of another attitude. But Moore’s paradox is as much a puzzle for belief as it is for assertion. And it would be equally puzzling to represent yourself to yourself in any of these ways—by believing any of these sentences. Moreover, it should seem puzzling for you to believe something that entails any such sentence—thus implicitly committing yourself to the truth of the sentence—if the entailment is easily recognized. The lore has it that asserting or believing Moore-paradoxical sentences is problematic. And yet a number of philosophers are implicitly committed to doing both in virtue of the philosophical positions that they espouse: things that they explicitly say entail instances of (1)–(7), where the entailments are easily recognized. If we alert them to their commitment to Moore-paradoxical sentences, they should either assert and believe these sentences—which many, following Moore, find ‘absurd’—or rethink their philosophical positions.

S O M E PH I LO S O PH I C A L P O S I T I O N S W I T H M O O R E - PA R A D OX IC A L C O N S E QU E N C E S

‘There are no beliefs’ Churchland (1981) and Stich (1983) are skeptical about the very notion of belief. ‘Belief ’ is part of a suspect folk psychology, likely to go the way of phlogiston and vital spirits—that is, ultimately to be discarded by science. On this view, neither I, nor you, nor anybody else ever has, ever had, or ever will have beliefs. Rather, we have whatever mental items will be postulated by a fully developed psychological theory. Thus, Churchland and Stich are committed to uttering sentences such as: ‘It is raining and I don’t believe that it is raining (and neither do you, nor anybody else, for ‘‘belief ’’ is part of a suspect theory of the mental)’. We have an easy way of generating sentences of type (2). Now, Churchland and Stich would surely not be fazed by this gambit—nor by the putative reductio that ‘they offer a philosophical position that, by their own lights, they don’t really believe!’ The right thing for them to say, of course, is

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that their mental state regarding the rain, or their own position, is whatever the fully developed psychological theory postulates it to be. Still, their commitment to Moore sentences is genuine, as is the puzzlement that it may induce in many of the rest of us. And we see our first trick for generating Moore sentences, one that we will see again: subject belief to different standards from those for (sincere, warranted) assertion. Indeed, according to Churchland’s and Stich’s standards for belief, nothing meets them: nobody ever had, ever has, or ever will have a belief. Yet presumably their standards for assertion are the usual ones. Thus, on their view, one may succeed in asserting something (sincerely and with warrant) while lacking a belief in that thing.² Now suppose that you are not totally convinced by Churchland and Stich, but you think that it is at least an open question—something else close to Moore’s heart—whether or not they are right. It seems that you are committed to sentences such as: ‘It is raining, and it is an open question whether I believe it is raining (and whether you do, and whether anybody else does, for it is an open question whether Churchland and Stich are right)’ and perhaps: ‘It is raining, and I am agnostic about whether I believe it is raining . . .’ These, too, sound pretty Moorish. If you want to avoid such a predicament, you should not be even agnostic about whether Churchland and Stich are right. Not that they would welcome this talk of agnosticism either, since presumably by their lights it is another folk psychological notion to be jettisoned. So if you really want to keep an open mind regarding their position, perhaps even the latter sentence is too committal. Better to play it safe: ‘It is raining, and it is an open question whether I am agnostic about whether I believe it is raining . . .’ And so on. Churchland’s and Stich’s position is programmatic; they await the details of a fully developed psychological theory. Let me go out on a limb and suggest one way that things could conceivably go. Psychology could adopt wholesale the terms of Bayesianism, eschewing talk of beliefs in favor of subjective probabilities. There is already this tendency in the work of Jeffrey (e.g. 1968), who seeks to replace the concept of knowledge with that of subjective probability, thus downplaying ² I say ‘presumably’ because I assume that even qua eliminativists, Churchland and Stich feel free to assert things very much as the rest of us do—after all, even their philosophical works on eliminativism are full of assertions, any one of which I could use to make my point. To be sure, assertion is usually characterized in terms of its role as the (purported) expression of belief, or in similar mentalistic terms. An eliminativist account of assertion would presumably look rather different. The mentalistic adjective ‘sincerely’ may similarly require an eliminativist gloss. ( Thanks here to an anonymous referee for this volume.)

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skeptical concerns about knowledge. Pushing this further, a Jeffrey-inspired psychologist might insist that ‘belief ’ cannot simply be reduced to subjective probability (citing, perhaps, the lottery and preface paradoxes, of which more shortly), and that subjective probability is the proper doxastic notion: folk psychology should be eliminated in favor of Bayesianism. Then speaking in his capacity as eliminativist, the psychologist may well say: ‘It is raining, and I don’t believe that it is raining (instead, I assign high subjective probability to it raining).’

‘Beliefs are propositions assigned subjective probability 1’ or ‘. . . very high subjective probability’ On the Churchland/Stich/Jeffrey-inspired psychologist view, beliefs are much harder to come by than you might think (since earning their keep in a mature psychological theory is a tough standard to meet)—so much so that there simply aren’t any. But we need not adopt positions as radical as theirs in order to generate Moore sentences. It suffices to adopt unusually high standards for belief while keeping normal standards for sincere, warranted assertion. Thus, we might be less demanding than Churchland, Stich, and the Jeffrey-inspired psychologist about the notion of belief, but demanding enough. For example, Hawthorne and Weatherson (2004) argue that ‘S believes that p’ should be analyzed as ‘S assigns subjective probability 1 to p’. Beliefs do exist on this view, but still they are harder to come by than you might think. If sincere, warranted assertions remain as easy to come by as you think, we can find propositions that make the cut for assertion, but that do not make the cut for belief, so understood. For such a proposition p, presumably S may properly assert p while disavowing belief in it. We might be moved by the lottery paradox,³ for example, to say that no threshold of subjective probability below 1 is sufficiently high to count as belief: you don’t really believe that your ticket will lose, you merely assign it probability 0.999999 of doing so. As long as a lower threshold suffices for (sincere, warranted) assertion, the conditions for Moore sentences are in place. Thus, it apparently becomes reasonable to say: ‘My ticket will lose (I assert this because my probability is above the threshold for assertion), but I don’t believe that my ticket will lose (since my probability falls below the threshold of 1 for belief)’. We may lower the standard for belief while arguably maintaining some daylight between the new standard and that for warranted assertion—and this still suffices to generate Moore-paradoxical sentences. Suppose that we set the bar for belief not at probability 1, as Hawthorne and Weatherson did, but at ³ Kyburg (1961).

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0.999. Plausibly, various sentences will still clear the bar for assertability, but not the bar for belief. As it might be: ‘the pubs are open (I am entitled to assert this since my credence in it is sufficiently high), but I don’t believe that the pubs are open (since that credence does not quite reach 0.999)’. The preface paradox⁴ furnishes an example of a related phenomenon, this time producing commissive Moore sentences of type (1). You preface a long book that you have written with the modest words: ‘Despite all my efforts, I am sure that there is at least one mistake somewhere in the book’. But the book itself can be regarded as a very long assertion—the conjunction of many individual assertions. Indeed, suppose that we replace all periods but the final one throughout the book with ‘and’s.⁵ You should be as committed to this unwieldy sentence as you were to the original book (even if you have acquired some stylistic qualms about it). Conjoining the unwieldy sentence to your preface, we have an assertion of the form: [MY BOOK] (the unwieldy sentence), and I believe that MY BOOK is false (since I believe that at least some conjunct in it is false). Schematically, we have the dreaded p, and I believe that p is false. The trouble is that assertion is an on/off, all-or-nothing act, whereas degrees of belief come in degrees. We do not have devices for giving assertion all of the nuance that we might want—say, boldness of typeface that varies with the strength of our convictions. Imagine that with each ‘and’ that we insert between successive sentences, their print fades accordingly; by the time we have conjoined them all, they become invisible! In a way, all of us—and not just certain idiosyncratic philosophers—find ourselves in the same uncomfortable shoes as the modest preface-writer, for on pain of gross immodesty, we all admit that some of our beliefs are false. Each of us would thus assert something of the form: [LONG CONJUNCTION OF MY BELIEFS] and I believe that LONG CONJUNCTION OF MY BELIEFS is false. Note that this does not require you to provide a complete enumeration of all your beliefs—an impossible task, surely. It suffices that you can find some long conjunction of beliefs of yours that you believe is false—an easy task, surely. For example, a few dozen beliefs of yours about the capital cities of countries in the world, or about phone numbers, or about the names of the children of your friends and colleagues, may well do the job. The conjunction might not even have to be at all long. Consider a recalcitrant paradox that has a grip on you that can be presented as a short list of premises, ⁴ Makinson (1965). ⁵ I assume that the book consists solely of sentences that have truth-value—I ignore, for example, imperatives or questions.

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each of which you believe, but which you recognize to be jointly contradictory. You assert: [SHORT CONJUNCTION OF THE PREMISES] and I believe that SHORT CONJUNCTION OF THE PREMISES is false (since I recognize them to be jointly contradictory). Perhaps one of Kant’s antinomies will fit the bill. In fact, soon we will see a single premise giving rise to this phenomenon—although only for certain idiosyncratic philosophers.

‘There are no higher-order beliefs’ Suppose that you are not skeptical about beliefs, the way that Churchland and Stich are, but that you are skeptical about higher-order beliefs. So you are happy to speak of beliefs (‘I believe that it is raining’, and so on) but you have no truck with beliefs about one’s own beliefs (‘I believe that I believe that it is raining’, and so on). Now take a belief of yours—say, that it is raining. Then you should be prepared to assert: ‘I believe that it is raining, and I don’t believe that I believe that it is raining (for that would be a higher-order belief, with which I have no truck)’ —something of the form ‘p, and I don’t believe that p’. Now suppose that you are not totally skeptical about whether there are higherorder beliefs, but you think that it is at least an open question. Then it seems that you are committed to sentences such as: ‘I believe that it is raining, and it is an open question whether I believe that I believe that it is raining’ —something of the form ‘p, and it is an open question whether I believe that p’.

‘There are only so many higher-orders that beliefs can reach’ Less radically, you might allow second-order, third-order, and perhaps still higher-order beliefs, but insist that the hierarchy must stop somewhere. You might say, for example, that the finiteness of our heads imposes limits on just how many times the belief operator can be iterated. (This is a commonplace in the literature on common knowledge in which it is acknowledged that the putative infinite iterations of ‘I know that you know that I know that . . . p’ are an idealization.⁶ See also Sorensen 2000.) Suppose, then, that you think that you have a highest order of belief: an nth order belief, for some n > 2. Find, if you can, an nth order belief of yours—say, that it is raining. Then you should be prepared to assert: ⁶ I thank Mitch Green for this point.

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‘I nth -order-believe that it is raining, but I don’t believe that I nth -orderbelieve that it is raining (for that would be an (n+1)th order belief, which exceeds my limit)’. And as before we can open the door to an ‘open question’ version of this.

‘There are no higher-order probabilities’; or ‘There are only so many higher-orders that probabilities can reach’ De Finetti (1972) and Savage (1954) are champions of subjective probabilities, but they are skeptical about higher-order subjective probabilities, or probabilities concerning one’s own probabilities. For example, by their lights it is nonsense to say ‘my probability that the coin lands heads is 1/2, and my probability that this really is my probability is 0.99’. De Finetti writes: ‘Any assertion concerning probabilities of events is merely the expression of somebody’s opinion and not itself an event. There is no meaning, therefore, in asking whether such an assertion is true or false or more or less probable.’ (1972:189). One of their arguments, roughly, is that any putative second-order probabilities would collapse to ordinary first-order probabilities—a reductio of the idea that there really were second-order probabilities in the first place. Both of these authors also seem to regard the threat of infinite regress as fatal to higher-order probabilities. Savage: ‘once second order probabilities are introduced, the introduction of an endless hierarchy seems inescapable. Such a hierarchy seems very difficult to interpret, and it seems at best to make the theory less realistic, not more’ (1954:58). De Finetti: ‘we have events and probabilities of events only; otherwise we would have the beginning of an infinite regression (probability of a probability, and so on)’ (1972:193). Consider, then, some statement of probability that de Finetti or Savage is prepared to make—say, ‘The probability that the coin lands heads is 1/2’. Now conjoin to it their skepticism about the notion of this statement in turn having a probability, and thus a fortiori, skepticism about this statement having a high probability: ‘The probability that the coin lands heads is 1/2, and I don’t assign this claim high probability (for this claim is not the sort of thing that has a probability at all)’. That is, we have a sentence of the form (7). Less radically, you might allow second-order, third-order, and perhaps still higher-order probabilities, but insist that the hierarchy must stop somewhere (again, perhaps because our heads are finite). Suppose, then, that you think that you have a highest-order probability assignment: an nth -order assignment, for some n > 2. Find, if you can, an nth -order probability assignment of yours—say, that it is raining. Then you should be prepared to assert: ‘My nth -order probability that it is raining is x, but I don’t assign high probability to the claim that my nth -order probability that it is raining is x

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(for that would be an (n+1)th order probability assignment, which exceeds my limit).’ Again, we have a sentence of the form (7).

‘There is no such thing as truth’ Paralleling our discussion of Churchland and Stich, now consider a philosopher who is skeptical of the very notion of truth. Let us suppose that he is prepared to assert sentences as usual, but he balks at assertions of the truth of sentences. Thus, a true⁷ Nietzschean ought to be prepared to assert sentences such as: ‘It is raining, but I believe that ‘it is raining’ is not true (for I reject the very notion of truth)’, a sentence of form (3). Similarly: ‘It is raining, but I don’t believe that ‘‘it is raining’’ is true (for I reject the very notion of truth)’, a sentence of form (4). Certain French philosophers and certain literary critics have a similar disdain, disrespect, or disregard for truth. They will pay for it similarly in Moorean ways (which is not to say that this is the worst of their problems). If someone were happy with the notion of (first-order) truth, but skeptical of the notion of higher-order truth, we could set them some Moorean bait: ‘ ‘‘It is raining’’ is true, but I don’t believe that ‘‘ ‘It is raining’ is true’’ is true (for that would involve higher-order truth, of which I am skeptical).’ And, much as before, we could also shanghai someone who thinks that there can be only n levels of higher-order truth, for some n > 2, with an nth -order truth-assertion of theirs that they do not believe is true. A skeptic about subjective probability—perhaps along the lines of Harman (1986)—could presumably be prepared to assert: ‘It is raining, and I don’t assign ‘‘it is raining’’ high probability (or indeed any probability, for I am skeptical about subjective probability)’, a sentence of form (7).

‘Truth is just what is useful for our purposes’ or ‘what is the consensus of our community’, or somehow ‘is relative’ We have just seen how to drive a wedge between an assertion and a belief in the truth of the assertion, by being unusually demanding about the notion of ⁷ I can’t resist this jab. Was Nietzsche a true Nietzschean in this respect? He seems to be when he writes: ‘Truths are illusions about which one has forgotten that this is what they are’ (Nietzsche 1994: 47). I thank Harold Langsam for this reference.

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truth. Going in the other direction, we could drive the wedge by being unusually undemanding about it. A certain kind of naïve pragmatist, for example, might translate talk of truth into talk of what is useful for our purposes. Thus, perhaps: ‘God does not exist, but I believe that ‘‘God exists’’ is true (it being useful for our purposes generally to act as if God exists)’. I dare say that this position is too naïve to take seriously. A bit more promising, perhaps, is the position of a rabid communitarian about truth: he thinks that the truth of a proposition p consists in a consensus of his community that p. He may find himself with a case of the Moores when he disagrees with such a consensus. For example: ‘God does not exist, but I believe that ‘‘God exists’’ is true (this being the consensus of my community).’ A certain kind of Peircean might append the words ‘. . . at the end of inquiry’, with similar results. Anyone who holds a relativist account of truth should strictly speaking make no sense of locutions of the form ‘p is true’. For by a relativist’s lights, there is no one-place predicate ‘ is true’ at all, but rather a two-place relation of the form ‘ is true relative to ’. The second argument-place will be filled in different ways by different relativists. A Protagorean may relativize an attribution of truth to a person; a Foucaultian may relativize it to a discursive formation; a Kuhnian may relativize it to a paradigm; a Quinean may relativize it to a theory or a language; a MacFarlanean may relativize it to a context of utterance or of assessment⁸ . . . The upshot is that a relativist should hold that an attribution of truth simpliciter is ill-formed, and thus not something that can properly be believed. Much as strictly speaking it is nonsensical to believe or to assert ‘Renée is younger’ or ‘Los Angeles is west’, so it is nonsensical to believe or assert ‘p is true’, according to the relativist. And yet relativists seem to have no trouble believing or asserting things in the normal way (some of them, anyway). Thus, Moorean sentences should glide off their tongues: ‘It is raining, and I don’t believe that ‘‘it is raining’’ is true (being nonsensical, as it lacks a needed second relatum).’ To be sure, context often makes missing relata clear. In a conversation in which I am comparing my age to various people, you will have no trouble understanding me when I say ‘Renée is younger’, because it is obviously elliptical for ‘Renée is younger than me’. Likewise, if we are both standing in New York, I may permissibly say ‘Los Angeles is west’, leaving tacit the relativization to here, understood by both of us to be New York. That does not show that ‘younger’ or ‘west’ may suddenly become one-place predicates. Rather, context simply ⁸ See MacFarlane (2005).

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makes obvious what the second argument-place is. So to be sure, context may make obvious which person, or discursive formation, or paradigm, or theory or language, or context of utterance or of assessment . . . is salient. Then a relativist may permissibly say that something is true, it being understood to what this attribution of truth is being relativized. But this only shows that sometimes it is permissible not to speak strictly. And context does not always make clear the missing relatum. When it does not, and the empty argument-place remains unfilled, the result is nonsense. Or so should say the relativist—about ‘younger’, or ‘west’ (as we all are), and about truth (as are the Protagorean, the Foucaultian, the Kuhnian, the Quinean, the MacFarlanean . . .).

‘There are truth gluts’ We already saw with the preface paradox that someone can be prepared to assert something while believing that it is false. There, at least, the Moore-paradoxicality was in a sense diffused over a long conjunction of beliefs, with no individual conjunct being simultaneously asserted and believed to be false. But there are cases where the Moore-paradoxicality is far more localized—indeed, to a single sentence. Faced with stubborn paradoxes like those generated by ‘liar’ sentences (‘this sentence is false’, and its brethren), some philosophers embrace the existence of truth gluts —sentences that are both true and false. Priest (1987) is perhaps most famous for this view. Presumably, then, Priest will not bat an eye at saying: ‘The liar sentence is true, and I believe that the liar sentence is false (and true)’. Now, I suspect that he would hardly be troubled biting the bullet of asserting a Moore sentence, having already bitten the nuclear bomb of contradiction. And those of us who reject dialethism probably recoil at the very notion of there being true contradictions. Thus, you might call my drawing attention to these Moore-paradoxical commitments overkill. I prefer to call them icing on the cake. An approach to vagueness, common to both supervaluating and subvaluating, considers all the various permissible ways of precisifying a vague predicate. (See Hyde 1997.) Subvaluating treats a statement as true simpliciter if it is true according to any such precisification. (We will consider supervaluating shortly.) Suppose that Bruce is a borderline case of ‘tall’. Then there are some precisifications of ‘tall’ according to which he is tall, and others according to which he is not tall. The subvaluator then adjudicates him to be both tall and not tall. Moore awaits (as well as the nuclear bomb): ‘Bruce is tall (and not tall), and I believe that Bruce is not tall (and tall)’, or deleting the parenthetical conjuncts, ‘Bruce is tall, and I believe that Bruce is not tall.’

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‘There are truth gaps’ Another non-classical reaction to the ‘liar’ sentences has it that they are truth gaps —sentences that lack truth-value altogether. Various philosophers consider various other sentences to be truth gaps. Expressivists about moral discourse, such as Ayer (1946), regard moral claims such as ‘murder is wrong’ as expressions of disapproval, but not truth-apt. Such an expressivist, then, should happily say things of the form: ‘Murder is wrong (as I am wont to express), and I don’t believe that ‘‘murder is wrong’’ is true (since the sentence is not truth-apt)’. To be sure, ‘murder is wrong’ may not be an assertion according to expressivists (any more than ‘Boo to murder!’ is). Still, there is no denying that our example fits the Moorean template, and that expressivists should be prepared to utter it. Wittgenstein apparently has a similarly expressivist view about certain mental state reports, such as being in pain: ‘To say ‘‘I have a pain’’ is no more a statement about a particular person than moaning is’ (1958:67). Then he should not flinch at saying: ‘I have a pain, and I don’t believe that ‘‘I have a pain’’ is true’. Adams (1975), Edgington (1995), and Bennett (2003) argue that conditionals lack truth-values although they may well be assertible. They should thus be prepared to say things like: ‘If it’s raining then the ground is wet, and I don’t believe that ‘‘if it’s raining then the ground is wet’’ is true (since the sentence lacks a truth-value)’. Some authors believe that vague predicates generate truth gaps. On this view, if Bruce is a borderline case of ‘tall’, then the sentence ‘Bruce is tall’ lacks a truth-value. In particular, this sentence is not true (as well as being not false). Now suppose that it is permissible, although of course not required, to believe a sentence that one takes to be a truth gap. Then this has Moorish consequences. As it might be: ‘I believe (permissibly) that Bruce is tall, and ‘‘Bruce is tall’’ is not true (being a truth gap).’ Consider, for instance, the supervaluational approach to vagueness, which identifies truth simpliciter with truth according to all permissible precisifications, so-called ‘super-truth’. Suppose that ‘Bruce is tall’ is true according to some permissible precisifications (as must be the case, on this approach, if Bruce is a borderline case). Then arguably my belief can permissibly follow these precisifications. Thus: ‘I believe that Bruce is tall (permissibly, since he is tall on some admissible precisfications), and ‘‘Bruce is tall’’ is not true (since it is not super-true).’

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There are probabilistic analogues of this phenomenon. Suppose that your state of opinion cannot be represented by a single probability function—e.g., your probability for rain is vague over the interval [0.5, 0.75]. Following Levi (1974), Jeffrey (1983), and van Fraassen (1990), we may represent you with a set of probability functions, each of which precisifies your probability for rain with some sharp number in the interval. What is determinately true of your opinion is agreed upon by all the functions in this set. It is determinately true in the example that your probability for rain is at least 1/2. On the other hand, any statement about your opinion that is true according to some functions in the set and false according to others is indeterminate, and thus not determinately true—e.g. that your probability for rain is at least 0.6. Now suppose that there is a proposition p for which your probability assignment is vague over a wide interval—wide enough that according to the left-hand endpoint, p is not probable, while on the basis of the right-hand endpoint, it is assertable. For example, suppose that your probability of there being life on Mars is vague over the interval [0.4, 1]. According to some permissible precisifications of your opinion (e.g. 0.4), you do not assign high probability to ‘there is life on Mars’; thus you do not determinately assign high probability to ‘there is life on Mars’. According to others (e.g. 1), ‘there is life on Mars’ is assertible; thus, it is permissible for you to assert ‘there is life on Mars’. Conjoining these facts, we now get you to assert: ‘There is life on Mars (I permissibly assert), and I don’t (determinately) assign ‘‘there is life on Mars’’ high probability.’ We arrive at a sentence of form (7) once we drop the parenthetical reminders of how we got there. I said at the outset that there is apparently no way of interpreting someone who utters (7) as having a single probability assignment for p. I am offering a way of interpreting such a person if we may ascribe to them vague opinion, represented as multiple probability assignments for p. So far I have tried to impale various specific philosophical positions on Moorish sentences, suggesting that even if the philosophers who propound these positions don’t feel any discomfort there, the rest of us may well do so. But let us not get too smug. Perhaps I should not single out these philosophers. Perhaps they are in good company.

A PH I LO S O PH I C A L PE S S I M I S T I C M E TA - I N D U C T I O N Philosophy is a strange business. We have strong incentives to assert things, preferably in print (and the higher the profile of that print, the better), where our commitment to them is made even more manifest. This much is common to any intellectual discipline. But unlike many other disciplines, there is good

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reason to think that much that is asserted in philosophy is simply false. Moreover, we philosophers know this. We need merely remind ourselves how much philosophers disagree; at most one party to a disagreement can be right (assuming that the disagreement is genuine and the parties are not merely talking past each other, and ignoring dialethism). Even prior to such disagreement, we must acknowledge that philosophy is a subtle business, and that saying something philosophically interesting and true is no mean feat; yet what is philosophically uninteresting is less likely to make it to print (still less high-profile print), so we have incentives to stick our necks out. And whatever the explanation, there is surely the brute historical fact that many, and perhaps even most, substantive philosophical positions that have been offered are false. (Indeed, some of the positions, believe it or not, even have Moore-paradoxical commitments!) For every important philosophical position that you claim is true, I will respond with ten such positions that we agree are false.⁹ But I’m sure you don’t need me—you can do it yourself. Laudan (1981) offers a ‘pessimistic meta-induction’ concerning the truth of scientific theories, on the basis of the historical track record of science. A philosopher like you may well likewise run a pessimistic meta-induction concerning the truth of philosophical theories, on the basis of the historical track record of philosophy. And now here you are, advancing your own ambitious, bold philosophical position: p. You assert it vigorously, you defend it in (high-profile) print, and so on. But do you really believe it? Suppose that you must bet at high stakes on p’s truth, and that God will settle the matter. Still feeling confident in it? You may not think, after all, that you are that much more reliable than various philosophers who have come before you whose equally vigorous assertions have not withstood the test of time. And so your standards for assertion and for belief are sundered. You publicly assert p, maybe even in (high-profile) print, but if you are honest with yourself, you admit that you believe that p is probably false, or that you are at best agnostic about p; in any case you don’t believe that p. At such a reflective and reflexive moment, then, you may catch yourself asserting sotto voce: ‘My philosophical position says ‘‘p’’ and I don’t believe ‘‘p’’ ’. Not that you will ever say that in print. REFERENCES Adams, Ernest (1975), The Logic of Conditionals (Dordrecht: Reidel). Ayer, A. J. (1946), Language, Truth, and Logic (Middlesex: Penguin Books). Bennett, Jonathan (2003), Conditionals (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Churchland, P. M. (1981), ‘Eliminative Materialism and the Propositional Attitudes’, Journal of Philosophy, 78/2: 67–90. ⁹ Lewis’s list of philosophical positions with dubious credentials (1991:59) is a good start; see also Stove (1991), throughout.

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Edgington, Dorothy (1995), ‘On Conditionals’, Mind, 104/414:235–329. De Finetti, Bruno (1972), Probability, Induction, and Statistics (New York: John Wiley). De Rose, Keith (1991), ‘Epistemic Possibilities’, Philosophical Review 100/4:581–605. Harman, Gilbert (1986), Change in View (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press). Hawthorne, John, and Weatherson, Brian (2004), ‘Beliefs Old and New’, http://brian. weatherson.net/belief.pdf Hyde, Dominic (1997), ‘From Heaps and Gaps to Heaps of Gluts’, Mind 106/424: 641–60. Jeffrey, R. C. (1968), ‘Probable Knowledge’, in I. Lakatos (ed.), The Problem of Inductive Logic (Amsterdam: North-Holland Publishing Company), 166–80; repr. in Probability and the Art of Judgment (Cambridge: Cambridge Studies in Probability, Induction, and Decision Theory, 1992). (1983), ‘Bayesian with a Human Face’, in J. Earman (ed.), Testing Scientific Theories (Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science, X; Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press), 133–56; repr. in Probability and the Art of Judgment (Cambridge: Cambridge Studies in Probability, Induction, and Decision Theory, 1992). Kyburg, Henry (1961), Probability and the Logic of Rational Belief (Middletown: Wesleyan University Press). Laudan, Larry (1981), ‘A Confutation of Convergent Realism’, Philosophy of Science, 48/1: 19–49. Levi, Isaac (1974), ‘On Indeterminate Probabilities’, Journal of Philosophy 71/15: 391–418. Lewis, David (1976), ‘Probabilities of Conditionals and Conditional Probabilities’, Philosophical Review, 85/3:297–315. (1991), Parts of Classes (Oxford: Blackwell). MacFarlane, John (2005), ‘Making Sense of Relative Truth’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 105/3:321–39. Makinson, D. C. (1965), ‘The Paradox of the Preface’, Analysis, 25/6:205–7. Nietzsche, Friedrich (1994), The Portable Nietzsche, trans. Walter Kaufmann (Harmondsworth: Penguin Classics). Priest, Graham (1987), In Contradiction (Dordrecht: Martinus Nijhoff). Savage, Leonard (1954), The Foundations of Statistics (New York: John Wiley). Slote, Michael (1979), ‘Assertion and Belief ’, in J. Dancy (ed.), Papers on Language and Logic (Keele: Keele University Library). Sorensen, Roy (1988), Blindspots (Oxford: Clarendon Press). (2000), ‘Moore’s Problem With Iterated Belief ’, Philosophical Quarterly, 50/198: 28–43. Stich, Stephen (1983), From Folk Psychology to Cognitive Science (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press). Stove, David (1991), The Plato Cult and Other Philosophical Follies (Oxford: Blackwell). Unger, Peter (1975), Ignorance: A Case for Scepticism (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Van Fraassen, Bas (1990), ‘Figures in a Probability Landscape’, in J. M. Dunn and A. Gupta (eds.), Truth or Consequences (Dordrecht: Kluwer). Williamson, Timothy (1996), ‘Knowing and Asserting’, Philosophical Review, 105/4: 489–523. Wittgenstein, Ludwig (1958), The Blue and Brown Books (New York: Harper and Row).

11 Moorean Pretense Robert M. Gordon

Wittgenstein noted that the absurdity of assertions of the form, p but I don’t believe that p, does not carry over to suppositions. He was right. The absurdity also does not carry over to what I take to be the more inclusive category, pretense.¹ For example, you can pretend—or suppose or imagine—that a certain species of mushroom is poisonous but that you are ignorant of this fact. You might even picture yourself innocently sautéing your mushrooms, then eating them and getting very sick. Or you can imagine walking down the crowded aisle of a busy department store, not looking where you are going, and walking into a supporting column in the middle of the aisle. You imagine: I am walking right into the column, but I don’t believe I am. By a Moorean Pretense, I mean a pretense that has at least one premise of either the ‘omissive’ form already mentioned, p but I don’t believe that p, or the ‘commissive’ form, p but I believe that not-p.² I speak of the premises of a pretense because pretense is plausibly construed as having an inferential structure. For example, when young children pretend that certain globs of mud are cherry pies, they are typically able to use that identification, together with additional information drawn from observation, The author is much indebted to Mitchell Green and John Williams for comments on an earlier version of this paper. ¹ The intuition behind calling it more inclusive is roughly this: When S pretends that p, S intentionally acts in some way as if p. The action may be limited to arguing (e.g., ‘supposing for the sake of argument’). There is of course also a cognitive or epistemic condition: perhaps, ‘S does not believe that p’ or perhaps only, ‘S is not certain that p.’ For example, during an athletic event, athletes may find it useful to pretend they are executing a perfect performance. They may well believe they are doing so—they are just not sure. ² See J. N. Williams, ‘Moore’s Paradox—One or Two ?’, Analysis, 39/3 (1979), 141–2 and Chapter 1 in this volume.

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to answer such questions as, ‘How many cherry pies are there?’ and, ‘Which cherry pie is biggest?’³ To answer the ‘How many’ question, for example, the relevant inference might be, ‘Each mudpie is a cherry pie [pretended premise], there are three mudpies [empirical finding], therefore there are three cherry pies [pretense-bound conclusion].’

1 . T H E I N D E X I C A L C H A R AC T E R O F M O O R E A N ABSURDITY Before discussing pretense, it is important to be clear about the indexical character of Moorean absurdity. The belief clauses, I don’t believe that p I believe that not-p contain the first-person indexical ‘I’ and implicitly the temporal indexical ‘now’, signified by the present tense. For an assertion to be Moorean-absurd, the belief clause must contain these or relevantly similar indexicals. Consider a contrasting case: You are walking down a crowded aisle, peering intently at a video monitor as you go. On the monitor you see people walking down a crowded aisle, and you presume correctly that you are watching a live real-time video of the aisle you are in. Suddenly you point to the monitor and remark, That person doesn’t know it, but (s)he is about to walk into a column! Or, to force the point, suppose you say, That person is about to walk into a column, but (s)he doesn’t believe (s)he is! If I happen to know that in fact you are the person in the monitor, I may find your remark comically absurd in context, but I do not find it Moorean-absurd. There is nothing inconsistent or self-stultifying about asserting, p but that person doesn’t believe that p.⁴ Although the person you are referring to as not believing what you have just stated is yourself, you are not referring to that person indexically as yourself. The corresponding point holds for the temporal indexical. Suppose you recognize yourself in the video but do not appreciate that it is a live video: I didn’t know it at the time, but I was about to walk into a column. I was about to walk into a column, but I didn’t believe I was. ³ See K. L. Walton, ‘Pictures and Make-Believe’, Philosophical Review, 82/3 (1973), 283–319. ⁴ Even referring to yourself by name would be insufficient for Moorean absurdity, for it would leave open the possibility that you do not know that the name refers to you.

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These are not examples of Moorean absurdity either.⁵ Similar indexical requirements hold for Moorean Pretense. A premise of the form, p but that person doesn’t believe that p, does not make a pretense Moorean. Nor can one convert it into a Moorean Pretense merely by identifying the person who doesn’t believe that p with oneself, the person who is doing the pretending. For example, I mentally picture someone who looks like me walking unknowingly into a column, and I think, ‘That’s me I’m picturing walking unknowingly into a column.’ This is not a case of Moorean Pretense, because the indexical ‘I’ is introduced only in my comment on the pretense, not within the pretense itself. A pretense is Moorean only if there is an ‘I’ within the scope of the pretense. It should be noted that an external identification with the ignorant nonbeliever is not only not sufficient for Moorean Pretense; it is also not necessary. That is, it is not necessary that the ‘I’ be understood to refer to myself, the very person who is doing the pretending. I can pretend to be someone else, a real or fictitious individual other than the person who is doing the pretending. I can also pretend the time to be other than the time of the pretending. The ‘I’ and ‘now’ within the pretense need not be co-referring with the ‘I’ and ‘now’ outside the pretense. That is, they need not refer, respectively, to the pretender and the time of the pretending. What matters is not what is referred to but the mode of reference, the I-now character of the reference.

2. THE DIVIDED PRETENDER Psychologically there is a major difference between pretending, That person doesn’t believe that p, and pretending, ⁵ A curious problem arises as it dawns on you that the unfortunate person on the monitor is actually you in realtime. Suppose you make this inference: That person is about to walk into a column, but (s)he doesn’t believe she is! Wait, that’s me! I’m about to walk into a column, but I don’t believe I am. (Or: I’m the one who is about to walk into a column, but doesn’t believe it.) Would your conclusion be Moorean-absurd? I have some inclination to say no, as long as the belief denial is strictly evidence-based: (Evidently) I don’t believe I am. (I would be similarly inclined where one’s assertion of the belief conjunct in a ‘Moorean’ sentence is based solely on neuroscientific evidence, such as results from brain imaging.) This is an unstable situation, however; once the ‘I and now’ identification is made, people would and should abandon the belief denial; otherwise, it would lead to absurdity.

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I don’t believe that p. What is the difference? The latter pretense requires that the ignorance or nonbelief be represented in a ‘first person’ way, by pretending not to believe that p. Likewise, pretending, I believe that not-p, requires pretending to believe that not-p. When I pretend to believe or not to believe something, I thereby modify the set of ‘facts’ that my decision-making within the pretense will have access to. For example, if I pretend to believe that the mushrooms on the plate are poisonous, then within the pretense I might refrain from eating them on the grounds that they are poisonous. If I pretend to believe that there is an obstacle in my path, then within the pretense I can plausibly change direction because there is an obstacle in my path. Not only actions, but also emotions, desires, and other beliefs will have access to this ‘fact’. If on the other hand I pretend not to believe that p, then I will not do anything, for example, change directions, on the basis of the ‘fact’ that p; nor will I form emotions, desires, or further beliefs on that basis. In short, one pretends that I believe (do not believe) that p only if one pretends to believe (not believe) that p; and pretending to believe (not believe) something constrains the facts on the basis of which one can act, emote, or make inferences within the pretense. Such constraints pose a psychological problem for Moorean Pretense. If one pretends p but it I don’t believe that p, then one pretends that p in a special way: a way that makes the pretend ‘fact’ that p unavailable to the ‘ignorant’ agent one plays. The pretend fact that p must somehow be cordoned off so that it cannot move one to action or emotion or lead one by rational inference to form new beliefs. Thus Moorean Pretense requires the pretender to represent the world twice over: once as the ‘objective’ or ‘outer’ world, which includes the pretend-fact that p; and once as the ‘subjective’ or ‘inner’ world, which excludes the pretend-fact that p. In a commissive Moorean Pretense one would feed contrary or contradictory premises into the two pretenses. In the mushroom example, one feeds into the outer pretense the premise, F. These mushrooms are false morels. However, one feeds into the inner pretense, as a possible basis for action, emotion, and other beliefs, the contrary premise, T. These mushrooms are (true, genuine) morels,

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Only the outer pretense has access to F, and only the inner has access to T. There is no leakage of information from one to the other; each is informationally insulated from the other. Compartmentalization has its limits, however. Consider the clown who plays the part of an innocent person walking, eyes averted, into a column—feigning ignorance, yet cognizant that unless he swerves from his path he will indeed walk into a column. It is sometimes difficult to feign such ignorance. A novice might telegraph his prescience by visibly decelerating as he nears the column, and by showing anticipation on his face. A seasoned performer, on the other hand, somehow manages to hide his knowledge from himself, so that it does not show in any readily observed emotions or actions. His finesse helps his audience engage in the two tasks as well: to project themselves into the clown’s innocence and yet at the same time to be fully clued in. For certain types of action, it appears to be not just difficult but humanly impossible to prevent our knowledge from influencing what we do. Discovering what we already know seems to be such a type. Consider a two-player game in which Player A hides something and Player B tries to discover or at least to guess correctly what it is. The hidden object may simply be what A is ‘thinking of ’, such as a particular number. Or it may be the particular coordinates of the squares that A has filled in on a hidden grid. In the Battleship game, the squares represent ‘ships’ of various types, each consisting of a certain number of contiguous filled-in squares in a straight line. Player B’s goal is to hit (bomb, torpedo) all of the squares comprising each of the opponent’s ships. B calls out the coordinates of the targeted square, and A replies by indicating whether the shot is a hit or a miss, and if a ship was hit, what type of ship was hit. Obviously it is important that A’s placement of the ships be hidden from B. (A similar game is the Windows game Minesweeper, which pits the human player against the computer.) Suppose one were to try to play solitaire Battleship or solitaire Minesweeper. One and the same human being would be both A the scene-setter, who sets up the ships or the mines, and B the scene-player, who tries to locate A’s ships or mines. The aim of the solitaire game would be to discover (as Player B) something you already consciously know (as Player A). Barring certain pathologies or a time interval long enough to allow one to forget what one did in setting the scene, such a task would seem at least psychologically (if not logically) impossible. For nothing set up by Player A will be hidden from Player B: Knowledge will ‘leak’ from scene-setter to player. Even more obviously, there appears to be no possible solitaire version of the game of ‘Guess what number I am thinking of.’ Moorean Pretense need not be as difficult as playing a game that requires that we discover something we already know. I can play in my mind the innocent morel-eater, knowing at the same time that I am the unknowing dupe of nature’s deceit. Nonetheless, pretending that p and simultaneously pretending not to believe that p (or to believe that not-p) is pretense of a sophisticated sort.

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3 . FA L S E B E L I E F I defined a Moorean Pretense as having at least one premise of either the ‘omissive’ form, p but I don’t believe that p or the ‘commissive’ form, p but I believe that not-p. Thus far, I have spoken as if the pretender were pretending each of the conjuncts to be true—that is, merely pretending. However, it is often the case that one of the conjuncts is imported into the pretend world from the actual world—that is, the world as the pretender actually believes it to be. Here are three distinct types of Moorean Pretense: 1. (ascription-preserving) I pretend that p, carrying over into my pretense my knowledge or belief that I don’t really believe that p (or do believe that not-p). Here my inner pretense, but not my outer, is simply carried over from the actual world. 2. (world-preserving) I pretend that I don’t believe that p (or do believe that not-p), carrying over into my pretense my knowledge or belief that p. Here my outer pretense, but not my inner, is simply carried over from the actual world. 3. (non-preserving) I pretend both that p and that I don’t believe that p (or do believe that not-p), carrying neither conjunct over from what I actually know or believe. Here neither pretense, inner or outer, is carried over from the actual world. Type 1 (ascription-preserving) Moorean Pretense is not uncommon. Philosophers and scientists pride themselves on asking themselves, ‘What if I am (we are) wrong?’ Sometimes this is a matter simply of pretending something contrary to what they actually believe, where it is not essential that at the same time they continue to believe as they do. But in other cases it is essential that they imagine continuing to believe as they do—and being wrong. For example, they may want to assess the cost of acting on a false positive relative to that of acting on a false negative. Accordingly, they carry out in their mind an action plan based on their actual belief and imagine the consequences likely to ensue if the belief is false. Descartes’s pretenses in the Meditations are also ascription-preserving Moorean Pretenses. He tries to persuade himself that nothing he currently believes is so, that the physical world he seems to perceive does not in fact exist, and that nothing he seems to remember is true. However, along with this pretense, he imagines himself continuing to believe as he actually does:

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I will consider myself as without hands, eyes, flesh, blood, or any of the senses, and as falsely believing that I am possessed of these. (Meditation I, paragraph 12)

Descartes’s beliefs within the pretense do not match the facts that shape the pretend world within which he holds these beliefs. It was this Moorean Pretense that made it possible to introduce the cogito and, in its wake, three of the major issues in modern philosophical thinking about the mind: the mind–body problem, the problem of phenomenal consciousness, and the problem of other minds.⁶ Type 2 (world-preserving) Moorean Pretense may be even more common. It may underlie our ability to anticipate and explain the behavior of people whom we know to be (or perhaps intend to be) mistaken about their environment. Developmental psychologists have devised a number of tests of the ability of children of various ages to recognize false beliefs in others. In the most famous of these, that of Wimmer and Perner, the child subject observes two puppet characters, trustful Sally who puts her marble away in her toy box and covetous Anne who transfers it to her own basket while Sally is out of the room.⁷ When Sally wants to play with her marble again, where will she go to get it? An adult or an older child is likely to say, Sally will go to her toy box, where she left the marble. Asked why she doesn’t go to Anne’s basket, where the marble actually is, they might answer, Sally was unaware that the marble had been transferred to Anne’s basket. She was unaware of this because she was out of the room at the time and therefore didn’t see it being moved. Young children, on the other hand, don’t seem to get it. Asked where Sally will go to get her marble, they will point to Anne’s basket, evidently using their own awareness of where the marble actually is. Wimmer & Perner and numerous other experimental studies have shown that nearly all children make incorrect predictions—until about age 4, when something seems to click, and nearly all get it right. What is it that clicks? According to the ‘simulation’ account I have given elsewhere⁸, it is the capacity for a kind of pretense—what I would now call Type ⁶ David Rosenthal has drawn a connection between Descartes’s cogito and Moore’s paradox in a number of his writings. The distinction between types of Moorean pretense is my own. ⁷ H. Wimmer and J. Perner (1983), ‘Beliefs about Beliefs: Representation and Constraining Function of Wrong beliefs in Young Children’s Understanding of Deception’, Cognition, 13/1: 103–28. ⁸ I have argued for such an account, although I did not label the kind of pretense involved as ‘Moorean Pretense’, in several publications, including ‘Folk Psychology as Simulation’, Mind and Language, 1/2 (Summer 1986), 158–71; repr. in W. Lycan (ed.), Mind and Cognition: An Anthology 2nd edn. (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 1998). A similar view has since been adopted by a number of developmental psychologists and has led to numerous experimental studies. Most of the early contributions by philosophers and developmental psychologists to the ‘simulation vs. theory’ debate first appeared in Mind and Language, 7/1–2 (Spring–Summer 1992), Special Issue on ‘Mental Simulation: Philosophical and Psychological Essays’); repr. in M. Davies and T. Stone (eds.), Folk Psychology: The Theory of Mind Debate (Oxford: Blackwell, 1995). For some of the later interdisciplinary work on the topic, see P. Carruthers and P. Smith (eds.), Theories of Theories of Mind (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996).

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2 Moorean Pretense.⁹ Suppose the child subject decides where Sally will go to get her marble by mentally playing the role of Sally. As Sally, the child wants to get her marble, and the place to get it, as the child knows, is Anne’s basket! To move beyond this automatic application of what the child knows, what must be pretended is the following: M. Sally’s marble has been moved to Anne’s basket, but I, Sally, don’t believe it has. The logical form of M is, of course, p, but I don’t believe that p. Again supposing that the child subject answers this question, ‘Where will Sally go to get the marble?’ by role-playing, it is essential that she be capable of compartmentalized reasoning. Otherwise, she would fail to cordon off the information she gained as spectator while Sally’s head was turned. In that case, she would make the incorrect prediction that Sally will look for her marble where it actually is, namely, in Anne’s basket. Does the empirical evidence support the hypothesis that in human beings the capacity to ascribe false beliefs depends on the capacity for Type 2 Moorean Pretense? Although far from conclusive, the evidence does offer some support. One relevant empirical issue concerns neuropathologies that deprive people of the capacity for Type 2 Moorean Pretense. It is well established that autism is associated with a notable lack of spontaneous pretense, particularly sophisticated forms such as Type 2 Moorean Pretense. A number of experimental studies have shown that people with autism generally exhibit a profound deficit in the capacity for false belief ascription.¹⁰ Nonetheless, some people with autism do manage to ‘pass’ various false belief tests. Can the same individuals also carry out sophisticated pretense? Do they, perhaps, find ways to ‘cheat’ on these tests, providing the right answers without invoking the concept of belief? Further, even if it is likely that a causal connection explains the coupling of these twin deficits in most people with autism, it is not yet clear which way the connection flows. Perhaps the lack of Type 2 Moorean Pretense explains the failure to ascribe false beliefs; perhaps the failure to ascribe false beliefs explains the lack of Type 2

⁹ I also believe that the capacity for Type 1 Moorean Pretense is needed, too, for ascribing belief to oneself —not just saying ‘I believe’ as a prefix to an assertion, but understanding one’s utterance as a genuine ascription of belief. I develop this point, among others related to belief ascription and Moorean Pretense, in a paper to appear in a special issue of Synthese on the topic, ‘Self-Ascriptions of Attitudes’. For an earlier application of Moore’s Paradox to self-ascriptions of belief, see my paper, ‘Sellars’s Ryleans Revisited’, Protosociology: An International Journal of Interdisciplinary Research, 14 (2000), 102–14. ¹⁰ For a fuller application of the simulation theory to autism, with some references to the empirical literature, see R. M. Gordon and J. Barker, ‘Autism and the ‘‘Theory of Mind’’ Debate,’ in G. Graham and L. Stephens (eds.), Philosophical Psychopathology: A Book of Readings (Cambridge: Mass.: MIT Press, 1994), 163–81.

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Moorean Pretense; and perhaps both deficits are connected only by having a common cause. Another relevant empirical issue concerns the age of onset of the capacity for Type 2 Moorean Pretense in children who are not autistic. Obviously, if the capacity to ascribe false beliefs depends on the capacity for Type 2 Moorean Pretense, it must not emerge earlier. However, methodological issues cloud the issue. Not only is it difficult to establish when such pretense begins; there has also been disagreement about the age at which genuine false belief ascription emerges.¹¹ Pretense of a less sophisticated sort usually becomes evident before age 2, long before the child can master false belief tests such as the Sally–Anne task.¹² However, the crucial and more difficult question concerns the capacity for Type 2 Moorean Pretense. Although I am not aware of any study that specifically asks when children begin to engage in such pretense, my bet is that it is not later than the age of false belief ascription. Finally, in Type 3 (non-preserving) Moorean Pretense, I pretend both that p and that I don’t believe that p (or do believe that not-p), carrying neither conjunct over from what I actually know or believe. The fantasies described in the first paragraph may be construed as examples of this type. In the inner pretense I am sautéing ordinary non-poisonous morel mushrooms, and in the outer pretense I am sautéing poisonous false morel mushrooms. Actually, I am doing neither. Or, in the inner pretense I am walking down the aisle with no obstacle in the way, and in the outer pretense I am walking into a supporting column in the middle of the aisle. Actually, I am merely sitting at home, fantasizing. Neither the premise of the outer pretense nor that of the inner pretense is carried over from the actual world of the imaginer.¹³ When a Moorean Pretense is acted out, whether in stage or film acting or in children’s pretend play, it is typically of Type 3. The actual world does not furnish the premise of either the inner or the outer pretense. For example, suppose, as before, children pretend certain mudpies to be ordinary cherry pies. However, that is just the inner pretense. The children also share an outer pretense: that one of these pretend-pies is a pie with secret magical powers. Eating such a pie ¹¹ However, the 4-year-old chronology does seem to be holding its own. See H. Wellman, D. Cross, and J. Watson, ‘Meta-Analysis of Theory of Mind Development: The Truth about False Belief ’, Child Development, 72/3 (2001), 655–84. ¹² See P. L. Harris and R. D. Kavanaugh, ‘Young Children’s Understanding of Pretense’, Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development, 58/1 (1993). ¹³ Whether these examples should be classified as Type 3 Moorean Pretenses depends, strictly speaking, on how the premise of the inner pretense is stated. If it is, ‘I am walking down the aisle of a department store, and not walking into a column’, then it is of course not true of someone who is merely sitting at home, fantasizing. However, if the premise is stated merely as, ‘I am not walking into a column’, then it is, strictly, true of the imaginer. Likewise, ‘I am eating ordinary (non-poisonous) morels’ is not true of the imaginer, but ‘I am not eating poisonous mushrooms’, is. Although this relativity is worth noting, I think it can be fixed with a little more work. (I noticed it just before going to press.) I am sure it raises no important problem for my distinction between three types of Moorean Pretense.

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241

immediately transforms one into a donkey. The children innocently pretend-eat the other pies, to no bad effect. Then they partake of the magic pie; and in a moment, acting out the sequelae of unseen forces, they begin to walk on all fours and bray. The mudpies are of course neither cherry pies nor magic pies. Neither of these premises is a holdover from the actual world. Moorean Pretense, particularly Type 3 Moorean Pretense, appears to be a defining property of dramatic irony. For example, in Oedipus Rex, Sophocles secures the audience’s complicity in a double pretense. We pretend that the actor who plays the protagonist is a man who has slain his father and married his mother, two events that mark him for destruction. We also pretend to see the world through the protagonist’s innocent eyes: The king he slew was not his father and the queen he married was not his mother. The audience is at once clued in and empathetic. It shares in the outer pretense that sets the scene for the action, and it shares in the inner pretense that allows the actor to get behind his scripted behavior.

4 . S U M M A RY Moorean Pretense is not absurd. It underlies Cartesian doubt and is rampant in modern science; it may underlie the ascription of false belief, and it is a defining feature of dramatic irony. Although not absurd, it is psychologically complex. Its complexity hinges on a feature that is also crucial to the Moorean absurdity of assertions: namely, the I-now character of the belief clause, I don’t believe that p, or, I believe that not-p. In an omissive Moorean Pretense, one is pretending ignorance of a premise of one’s own pretense, namely that p. In a commissive Moorean Pretense, one is pretending that a premise of one’s own pretense is false. What keeps the commissive pretense from being not only absurd but self-contradictory is the capacity to compartmentalize. Although one is at the same time pretending that p and pretending that not-p, one assigns these contradictories to distinct logical spaces, one space containing the world and the other, the world relativized to a particular point of view.


Index of Names Abelard 42 Adams, E. 228 Adler, J. 3, 30–1 Albritton, R. 144 Allen, W. 195 Alston, W. 71 Atlas, J. 29–30, 126 Armour-Garb, B. 30–1 Audi, R. 22, 106 Augustine 29, 41–3 Ayer, A.J. 228 Bach, K. 126 Baldwin, T. 18, 25, 30 , 76–8 Benaccerraf, P. 143 Bennett, J. 228 Bentham, J. 42 Berry, G.G. 37 Black, M. 14, 23 Boër, S. 120 Bonjour, L. 71 Brandom, R. 27 Brentano, F. 18, 20 Brontë, C. 181 Buridan, J. 38 Burge, T. 85 Buñuel, L. 31 Burnyeat, M. 42 Cantor, G. 37 Carroll, L. 44 Castañeda, H. 118, 136 Church, A. 38 Churchland, P. 219–21, 223, 225 Collins, A. 3, 13 Crimmins, M. 32 Da Vinci 44 Davis, W. 195 Davison, A. 135 De Finetti, B. 224 De Almeida, C. 16, 30 De Morgan, A. 61 Dennett, D. 84 DeRose, K. 4, 14, 218 Descartes 29, 33, 38, 43–4, 47, 85, 142–4, 237–8, 241 Doran, K. 27 Dretske, F. 70

Edgington, D. 228 Emerson 42 Evans, G. 16–17, 31, 92, 94–7, 100–2, 104, 107–9 Fitch, F. 37 Foucault 226–7 Foley, R. 65, 71 Galileo 81 Gallois, A. 3, 32 Geach, P. 46 Gettier, E. 65 Goethe 45 Goldstein, L. 13 Gombay, A. 3 Gordon, R. 4, 29, 33 Green, M. 3, 30, 31, 195 Grice, P. 77, 195 Hájek, A. 31–2 Halpern, B.S. 47 Harman, G. 225 Hawthorne, J. 221 Heal, J. 3, 13, 17, 31, 80, 84–85 Hegel 38 Hintikka, J. 28 , 143 Hume 84 Hunter, J.F.M. 135 Hyde, D. 227 Jacobson, R. 12 Jeffrey, R.C. 220–1, 229 Jones, O.R. 26 Jourdain, P. 37 Kant 39, 45, 223 Kepler 44 Klein, P. 16, 65 Koestler, A. 81 Kriegel, U. 18–20 Kripke, S. 133 Kuhn 226, 227 Lakoff, G. 141–3 Langford, C.H. 7, 140–2 Laudan, L. 229 Lehrer, K. 65

244

Index of Names

Levi, I. 229 Levinson, S.C. 13, 126 Lewis, C.I. 40 Lewis, D.K. 118, 187, 218 Linville, K. 12 Locke, 85 Lycan, W. 120, 135 MacDonald, M. 37 MacFarlan, J. 226–7 Maclver, A.M. 140 McTaggart, J.M.E. 38 Makinson, D. 159 Malcolm, N. 6, 12, 165 Mariotte, E. 44–45 Martinich, A. 13 Merton, R. 37 Milgram, E. 3 Moore, G.E. 3–6, 9, 29, 37–8, 46–8, 53, 76–7, 85, 88, 90–1, 128–9, 155, 165 Moran, R. 4, 29, 128, 133–6 Morris, C. 141 Murdoch, I. 135 Nietzsche 225 Nozick, R. 70 Ockham 42 O’Connor, D.J. 39 Orwell, G. 81 Packer, A. 200 Parmenides 29, 39, 43 Pecquet, J. 45 Peirce, C. 226–7 Perner, J. 238 Perry, J. 118 Plato 29, 40, 42 Priest, G. 227 Prior, A.N. 118 Protagoras 226–227 Putnam, H. 135 Quine, W.V.O. 117–8, 120, 124, 226–7 Ramsey, F. 44 Reagan, R. 195 Reid, T. 85 Rhys, J. 181

Ring, M. 12 Rosenthal, D. 4, 15, 23, 31–2, 137 Russell, B. 37–38, 46–47, 57 Salerno, J. 38 Sanford, D. 46 Sartre, J.P. 134 Savage, L. 224 Schopenhauer, A. 44–46 Searle, J. 21–22, 24, 31, 106–7, 109, 135 Sellars, W. 139–140 Sextus, E. 41 Shoemaker, S. 3, 12, 23–4, 28, 30, 137–140, 142–4, 205 Slote, M. 218 Smith, F.E. 41, 157 Sophocles 241 Sorensen, R. 3, 6, 21–2, 29, 31, 91–2, 104–7, 109, 111, 223 Sosa, E. 65, 71 Spinoza 29, 43 Stevenson, C.L. 48, 165 Stich, S. 219–21, 223, 225 Stigler, S. 37–8 Stoljar, D. 31 Strachey, R. 47 Strawson, P. 196 Stroud, B. 84 Szabo-Gendler, Z. 4 Tversky, A. 14 Unger, P. 14, 146, 154–5, 218 Vahid, H. 17 Van Fraassen, B. 229 Vanderveken, D. 24, 31 Weatherson, B. 221 Welbourne, M. 26 Wiener, N. 38 Williams, B. 44 Williams, J.N. 3, 15–17, 27–8, 30–2, 53–8, 76–7, 92, 212 Williamson, T. 14, 32, 155, 218 Wimmer, H. 238 Wittgenstein, L. 3, 4, 6–8, 12, 44–5, 47, 122, 134, 146, 154, 165, 190, 228, 232 Wolgast, E. 24

Subject Index absurdity 5–8, 10–13, 15, 21, 25–7, 29, 62–71, 73, 76, 78, 90, 92, 100, 106, 109, 137, 190–3, 192, 194, 202–10, 212, 219, 232–3, 241. commissive 5, 8, 17, 19, 20, 21, 31, 91–2, 107–9,112, decrease of 20, 31–2, 92, 104, 109, 112–13 examples of 3, 5, 8, 21, 30–1, 56, 72, 76, 90–1, 104, 147–8, 152, 153–5, 161, 166–7, 190, 192–3, 210, 211–12, 233. grammatical characterisation of 29, 56, 189 Moorean 4, 9, 10–12, 14, 19, 22, 29–32, 44, 48, 53–8, 77–80, 82, 84–8, 90–2, 100, 107, 110–112, 189–91, 203–6, 210–13, 233–4, 241 ommissive 6, 8, 17, 20–1, 31, 91–2, 101, 104–5, 107–9, 112–13 paradigmatic 91, 104 acceptance 153–4, 212 agnosticism 13, 81, 173, 220 alienation 134 all-seeing eye 29, 37, 42 amnesia 130–2, 199 antinomies 223 apartheid epistemologies 71 assent 198, 205 conscious 139 manifest 139–40 assertability 154–160, 222 assertion 10–14, 26–8, 30, 40–1, 55, 82, 96, 111, 118, 125, 128, 132–3, 136–7, 146–150, 153–4, 158, 166, 169, 190, 193, 196, 201, 207–8, 210–12, 218–22, 224–5, 228, 230, 232 absurdity of 3, 5, 7–8, 18, 32, 86, 88, 90–1, 110, 207, 190 and belief 1, 3, 7, 12, 30, 41, 43, 77–8, 82–3, 85–6, 88, 121, 137, 140, 143, 146–7, 148–9, 154, 156, 167, 161, 202–3, 206–7 and expression 12, 15, 24, 128–40, 146, 148–9, 153, 160 commissive 5, 27, 31–2, 86, 91–2, 110, 112–13 context of 26, 27, 158, 131, 226–7, 191 its distribution over conjunction 12, 10, 14, 23, 26, 67, 110, 158, 193, 204, 206–07 and implication 4–6, 8, 10, 13–14, 76–8, 86–7, 90, 146

logic of 7, 8, 143, 118, 153 Moorean 4, 5, 11–13, 23–7, 53, 78–9, 82, 86–7, 92, 110–112, 137, 142, 149, 154, 155, 210–211, 233, 241 omissive 5, 13, 26–7, 31–2, 43, 86, 91–2, 112–113 purported 143, 156, 206 rational 142–3, 202, 207, 210 sincere 11, 93–4, 112, 139, 141–3, 148, 201–3, 206–8, 211–12 uttering assertively 5, 129, 131, 137, 140, 142–3, 194 attitude-related reasons 148, 173–5, 178, 183, 185 authority 92–3, 96–7, 156–7 autism 239 Bayesianism 220–1 belief 174, 178, 183–4, 190–3, 195, 197, 208, 219–25, 227, 230, 233, 241 and closure 11, 21, 61, 65, 69, 105 concept of 99, 106 conscious 78–9, 165–7, 171–2, 175–80, 182, 185–8, 201, 204–5 commissive 91, 92, 101, 102, 109, 204–5 de dicto 59, 120, 126–7, 143 degree of 152, 159 de re 119–20, 126–30, 133, 136, 143 de se 119–20, 126–30, 133, 136, 143 dispositional 22, 106 its distribution over conjunction 54–6, 58, 61, 140, 142, 149, 167, 170–2, 204, 206, 207 and the distribution of justified belief over conjunction 99–102, 107, 109 expression of 55, 81, 128, 135, 139–40, 190, 193, 222, 224, 228 elimination 21, 105 higher-order 79–80, 144 and iterated operators 167, 170, 180, 182, 186, 187 manifest 77, 139, 196, 199–201 meta-linguistic 131 Moorean 53–57, 64–73, 77–9, 84, 86, 91, 93, 96, 97, 101–04, 204–5 notional sense of 117 and occurrent thought 21, 22 omissive 10–11, 16–21, 25, 28, 91–2, 104–5, 107, 109, 112, 204–5

246

Subject Index

belief (cont.) and principle of elimination 21, 100, 102, 105, 108 rational 55, 72, 142–3, 171, 179, 191, 194 relational sense of 117–18, 124 reporting 7, 12, 135, 137, 193 and Searle’s principle 106–7, 109 second-order 92, 98–9, 101, 107 self-ascriptions of 13 blindspot 38, 44–5 Cartesian doctrines 33, 38, 43–4, 47, 85, 142–4, 237–8, 241 coherence 12, 15, 45, 53, 58–61, 63–7, 70, 73, 78–9, 94, 99, 101, 124, 134, 159 commitment 61, 135–6, 144, 196–202, 205, 209, 212, 217, 219–20, 227, 229–30 communitarian 226 community 199, 225–6 conditionals 143, 209, 228 consciousness 150, 165–6, 175, 179, 182, 185, 189, 199, 201–2, 212, 236, 238 consensus 225–6 content-related reasons 173–5, 178, 183–5, 187 contradiction 90, 99–103, 105, 108–9, 190, 192, 227 counterevidence 16, 58–9, 64, 67, 70 deletion 166, 178–80, 185 deliberative perspectives 133 delusion example 200 dialectical games 40 discourse 118, 226–7 dissociation 6, 133, 134 eliminativism 32, 166, 221 EP test 57–8 epistemic goal 55 epistemic probability 59 Evans’s principle 15–17, 92, 94, 96–7, 99, 101, 102, 104, 107–8 expressivism 228 fact/value distinction 135 fallibility 55, 57, 85, 91, 98, 101–2, 157–60, 194, 201, first-person point of view 122, 149, 154, 162 folk psychology 219, 221 foundationalism 66, 70 functionalism 3, 84 God 13, 21, 24, 31, 42–4, 46, 91–2, 104, 105, 109, 112, 177–8, 226, 230 grammaticality 14, 29, 119, 122–6, 130, 135–6, 189, 206, 209

higher-order thought 137 idealism 37–8, 42, 46–7 illocutionary force 135, 146, 208 inconsistency 25, 28, 30, 40–1, 43, 47, 54–5, 59–60, 62, 63, 77, 79, 86–7, 103, 131, 137–8, 141–3, 147, 150–1, 157–9, 167–8, 170–2, 187–8, 233 Strong versus weak 63, 67 incorrigibility 141–2 indeterminacy 229 indexicals 191, 233–4 infinite regress 80, 144–5, 155, 172, 224 Inner and Outer 7, 134–6, 198–9, 235–7, 240–1. Integration 32, 134, 166, 178, 180–3, 185–8 intention 25–8, 42, 77–8, 80, 82, 84, 92, 110–11, 132, 174–5, 185, 190, 195–7, 199–201, 212 introspection 42–3, 47, 55, 63, 93, 96, 98, 134, 201, 204 irrationality 53, 55–6, 59–61, 101–3, 107, 166, 172 judgment (judgement) 3, 6, 10, 80, 85–8, 107, 113, 152, 154, 160 justification 3, 16–17, 27, 30, 32, 65, 67, 70–3, 85, 92–104, 107–9, 143, 159, 167, 179, 180, 198, 202–3, 211 knowledge 3–4 ,11, 14, 22–31, 37–8, 41–3, 45, 47–8, 63, 70–1, 94, 104, 106, 110, 149, 154–6, 160, 199, 202, 211, 220–1, 223, 236–7 language 23, 47, 126, 135–6, 143, 190, 198, 226–7 malapropism 122 meaning 3–5, 7, 10, 14, 39–40, 48, 57, 77–8, 120, 123, 140–2, 169, 199 speaker 141, 194–5, 197–9, 200–1, 205, 211–13 literal 141–2 pragmatic 140–2 meta-induction 32, 229–30 moral discourse 228 norms 56, 82–3, 84, 85, 88, 146–7, 154–6, 191–4, 202–3, 205, 207, 210–12, 221 226 omnipotence 44 omniscience 92, 102, 138, 157 open question 142, 220, 223–4

Subject Index pain 190, 222, 228 paradigm 84, 91, 104, 146, 169, 171, 226–7 paradox 222, 227 history of 37 Jourdain’s Visting Card 37 liar 3, 38, 57, 227–8 lottery 160, 221 Moore’s 3, 37–8, 43–4, 90–1, 100, 189–91, 203, 219 preface 54, 157–61, 193–4, 221–2, 227 Russell’s 37 perception 45, 83–6, 93, 95–6, 98, 100–1, 206 performatives 30, 80–2, 85, 135 phlogiston 219 plastic surgery example 133 pragmatics 10–11, 27, 32, 39, 90, 95, 141 precisification 227–9 predicate 117–18, 125–6 pretense 232–241 commissive 232, 235, 237, 241 omissive 232, 237, 241 privileged access 117, 137, 139, 143–4 probability 152, 159, 161, 218–19, 221, 224–5, 229 higher-order 224 subjective 160, 192, 218, 220–1, 225 pronouns anaphoric 118, 120–1 indirect reflexive 118, 136–7, 144 of laziness 121 propositional attitudes 79, 117, 120, 146, 149, 153, 166–8, 170, 172, 174, 176–7, 184, 187, 208 quantification 118 quasi-performative 85, 135 rationality 9, 15, 23, 28, 32, 33, 53, 55, 56, 59–61, 65–6, 72, 95, 97, 101–4, 107, 112, 117, 133, 141, 143, 166–7, 170, 172, 180 degrees of 22, 65, 107 doxastic 11 53–6, 66–7, 70–1 ideal 21–2, 105–7 practical 10, 12, 23, 24, 30,191–2, 194, 202 theoretical 9–10, 12, 13, 24, 29, 30, 191–4, 202, 207, 210 relativism 32, 37, 225–7, 237, 241 scope 57, 141, 146, 148, 179, 182, 186–7, 205, 208–10, 234 self-awareness 79

247

self-knowledge 93, 97, 102, 134, 137, 138 self-refutation 41, 53–5 sentence identity criteria of 123 Moorean 11, 13, 15, 20, 23–4, 27–9, 47, 105, 134, 136–8, 140–3, 205, 217–22, 226–7 string 119, 122–4 system 123, 138 token 125 type 123, 125–6, 219, 222 simulation theory 238 sincerity 80–1, 112, 141, 143, 195, 202, 206, 208 singular term referential 117, 127 transparent 124–5 skepticism 224 social pragmatism 27 speaker-meaning 194–202, 205, 211–13 speech acts 24, 77, 82, 88, 135–7, 146, 156, 201–3, 208, 210–13 spoonerism 122–3 Stigler’s Law 37–8 sub-valuationism 227 super-valuationism 227–8 supposition 7, 13–14, 31, 48, 83, 100, 109, 207–10, 232 theoretical perspectives 133 thick concepts 136 transparency 30–1, 143, 146–9, 151, 153, 158, 160 truth 9, 10, 13, 22, 23, 27–8, 37, 39, 40, 42, 44, 47, 55, 56, 60–3, 70–2, 79, 81–2, 85–6, 88, 92, 101, 106, 110–112, 121, 135–6, 139, 143, 149, 153–5, 158, 161, 174, 177–8, 180, 205–7, 219, 226, 230 gaps 32, 228 gluts 32, 227 higher-order 225 possible 32, 90, 102–4, 107 truth-tracking epistemologies 9, 70–2 Unger-Williamson thesis 146, 154 utterance Moorean 77–8, 203 token 122, 125–6, 128 type 122–24, 126–8, 130, 133 vagueness 227, 228 validity 9, 17, 61–2 vital spirits 219 visual field 44–6

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